Countries refuse to share debt data

Four countries, Germany, France, Italy and Portugal are refusing to share information on debt in key areas with the EU.

Under the terms of the new budget surveillance legislation, all eurozone countries are obliged to release data on government liabilities stemming from public pension schemes, guarantees to banks and public corporations where they have a large impact on public budgets.

The final details are being negotiated between the European Parliament and the member states but talks were broken off yesterday when the parliament objected to the four countries refusing to share this information.