Pierre Moscovici, who today presented the Commission’s opinions on the draft budgets of the Euro Zone countries, said the opinion only covered 15 of the 19 countries in the single currency space.
This was because “the opinion about the Spanish budget was adopted on 12 October, Cyprus and Greece are under the programme and there was the specific case of Portugal, which has not sent any plan”, he said.
“I underline that this is the first time such a thing has happened. It is something we can understand given the complicated political situation, but it is also regrettable. We ask that the new Portuguese government sends us their plan as soon as they are in office”, Moscovici said.
Portugal was the first country to miss the deadline for delivering the budget plan for the following year since the two-pack budget supervision legislation came into force for the euro area in 2013, and still has not sent Brussels the document given the political situation in the country after the fall of the PSD/CDS-PP government programme.