EU Nations Violating Deficit Caps May Be Fined Up to 0.5% of GDP

Euro-area governments may under European Commission proposals be fined as much as 0.5 percent of their countries’ gross domestic product if they ignore recommendations to fix economic imbalances, European Union President Herman Van Rompuy said.

The commission “will develop a number of indicators that show if a country gets into problems economically,” and “we’ll check that for the first time in March,” Van Rompuy said in an interview in Dutch on the television program “Buitenhof” today. Any country that ignores a recommendation to correct those problems will be punished “immediately,” he said.