Malta has to take additional fiscal measures to address the deficit next year and comply with the stability and growth pact, a Eurogroup meeting has concluded.

The meeting of Eurozone finance ministers yesterday agreed with the European Commission’s assessment that Malta faced the risk of “significant deviation” from the adjustment path in 2015.

The government had claimed the Commission’s assessment was based on the draft Budget for 2015 and did not take into account the revenue raising measures. The Eurogroup seems to have taken this view into account but still noted the need for further measures to bring the deficit in line with the requirements of the stability and growth pact.

In its statement the Eurogroup said according to the latest Commission assessment, Malta’s structural fiscal effort in 2015 would be minus 0.2 per cent of GDP. It acknowledged the figure did not include the consolidation measures announced in the 2015 Budget.

The Commission had concluded the deficit had to drop by 0.6 per cent of GDP under the preventive arm. “On that basis, additional measures would be needed to allow for an improvement of the structural effort in order to comply with the rules of the stability and growth pact,” the Eurogroup statement said. Malta is considered to be under the “preventive arm” as opposed to the more serious “corrective arm” that countries like France and Italy are in.

However, the Eurogroup also welcomed Malta’s commitment to implement the measures necessary to ensure that the 2015 Budget would comply with eurozone rules.

This was the second year running that eurozone countries coordinated their budgets under regulations on the strengthening of budgetary monitoring.

Reacting, Finance Minister Edward Scicluna said he was pleased that Malta had been classified as being under the preventive arm rather than the corrective arm, “confirming Malta is expected to exit from the current excessive deficit procedure early next year”.