Maastricht values | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal
Agnès Bénassy-Quéré The Maastricht fiscal architecture relies on limits on debt and the general government deficit. The reference values used are 3% for the deficit and 60% for the debt, both in terms of GDP. These reference values are not specified in the body of the Treaty. Instead, they are defined in an annexed Protocol. The expression “reference values” is used six times when defining the two criteria to be used by the European Commission when monitoring developments of public finances, with a view to identifying “gross errors” in the conduct of fiscal policy. These two refer...
Source: voxeu.org