Commission to take finance ministers to court

THE European Commission, in an unprecedented move, is to take finance ministers to court for breaking treaty rules.

It says the ministers, having agreed that France and Germany were about to run illegal budget deficits of more than 3% of GDP for the third row in a year, should have taken action as laid down in the rules.

Instead, they let the union’s two largest economies off the hook and agreed they could implement their own prescriptions to bring their economies back into line with the Stability Pact rules designed to keep the eurozone stable.