Interesting that MEP Simon Busuttil (May 26) should ask whether "eurozone countries (should) put a 'brake on debt' by binding themselves in their respective Constitutions in favour of budgetary discipline and not to run repeated deficits".

In 1998, monitoring Malta's recurring hefty budget deficits which by then had assumed structural proportions, I proposed in The Times and on Net TV that the House of Representatives should agree an insertion in our Constitution of a clause that would bind governments not to run budgets with higher than a stipulated percentage GDP under any circumstances for any one fiscal year and a lower percentage figure as an annual average during the duration of any legislature, except with the approval of at least 75 per cent of the House in very exceptional circumstances.

Reaction? None. Both parties prefer not to be tied in governing. But then we had not yet joined the EU !

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