BRUSSELS: The European Commission, which polices euro zone governments' finances, has delayed publication of a planned rebuke of Spain's 2016 draft budget for a few days, officials said on Wednesday.
The Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, said on Monday that Spain's 2015 budget and its plans for next year were at risk of breaking EU fiscal rules.
A formal declaration was to be adopted by the Commission on Tuesday but, in a rare move highlighting the sensitivity of the issue, its president Jean-Claude Juncker suspended the procedure.
"The president felt more time was needed for this," his spokesman told a regular EU briefing on Wednesday. Spain's parliament is about to hold its final vote on the draft budget before it is dissolved in two weeks ahead of national elections on Dec. 20.
"The Commission plans to adopt the opinion on Spain at the latest at its next college meeting scheduled for next Wednesday," a senior EU official told Reuters.
"The opinion may be adopted even earlier". The Commission is unlikely to change the substance of its rebuke, officials say, underlining that the delay was caused mostly by "external pressure" following Moscovici's announcement.
Spain's Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said he was confident the fiscal targets would be respected, a stance supported by his German counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble.
In an unusual intervention from someone with a reputation as a fiscal hardliner, Schaeuble said on Tuesday that Spain had made impressive progress in sorting out its finances.
"Spain has clearly acted in keeping with EU regulations in (setting its budget). I was a little surprised to see the EU Commission take a somewhat more critical line," he told a news conference following a meeting of euro zone finance ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday.
Schaeuble has in the past held up Spain as a model of fiscal discipline among the economically weaker nations forced by the EU to undergo austerity programmes.
The governing Christian Democrats (CDU) of which he is a member are also a political ally of Spain's People's Party (PP), which is battling to secure re-election in December.
Moscovici said that according to European Commission forecasts prepared in September, Spain's deficit would reach 4.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2015 instead of the required 4.2 percent.
In 2016 the deficit is seen at 3.5 percent of GDP, much higher than the target of 2.8 percent.
New fiscal rules adopted after the euro zone debt crisis give the European Commission the power to seek amendments to national budgets.
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