European Commission's initial reaction to stability and reform programmes announced by the Spanish Government

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2013-04-28

The Commission welcomes the approval of Spain's National Reform Programme and Stability Programme. We look forward to receiving the documents as soon as possible, so as to be able to start our assessment.

As announced on 10 April, the Commission will now examine the policy plans set out in these two programmes, to assess to which extent they are adequate given Spain's excessive imbalances. We will present our conclusions and recommendations on 29 May.

Regarding the fiscal targets, the postponement of the correction of the excessive deficit (to below 3% of GDP) to 2016 is consistent with the current technical analysis by the Commission services of what would be a balanced - but still ambitious - fiscal consolidation path, given the difficult economic environment.

It is crucial that the fiscal path in the Stability Programme be based on prudent macroeconomic assumptions and a sufficient amount of high-quality, structural measures. Our assessment in this regard will be also made public on 29 May.

We have no further comment to make at this stage.

Source: European Commission

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