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Belgium escaped a fine for its excessively high deficit, but the Commission made some strict recommendations on May 29, notes Belgian daily De Standaard. Olli Rehn, the Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, asked the Belgian government to slash an additional €3bn from its budget in 2014, to end early retirement and to stop automatically raising salaries to meet inflation. It also asked for the division of responsibility for public spending between the federal and regional authorities to be revised.
The EU wants to see the responsibilities, which are a source of conflict between linguistic communities [French and Dutch speaking], codified in the country's new public finance legislation.
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