“We briefly analysed the European Commission references to review the targets, included in the specific recommendations per country for Spain and Portugal. We took note of the Commission’s proposals, but we decided to delay the discussion about this information until the Commission publishes its formal proposals about the EDP for these two countries, which should happen in early July”, the acting chairman of Ecofin said.

The Ecofin council followed the EC recommendation regarding Cyprus, Ireland and Slovenia and closed the procedure on these three countries which had deficits below the 3% limit in 2015 in a “lasting manner”.

“As a result, there are only six countries with excessive deficit procedures, compared with 24 in mid-2011 and this is very good news”, Dijsselbloem said.

On 18 May, the European Commission recommended that Cyprus, Ireland and Slovenia be removed from the procedures, leaving just six countries in the corrective arm of the Stability and Growth Pact, namely Croatia, France, Greece, Portugal, Spain and the UK.