Governments rounded on the European Commission on Wednesday for going to court to settle an acrimonious row over the suspension of EU budget rules.
Spain and the Netherlands were rare exceptions, siding with Brussels, as they did in November when finance ministers decided to put the EU's Stability and Growth Pact on ice rather than punish Germany and France for breaking its deficit limits.
Paris criticised the Commission's decision, as Berlin did on Tuesday, with French Labour Minister Francois Fillon warning that the move risked pushing voters into the arms of those opposed to the European project at European elections in June.
Current EU president Ireland said it would have preferred the EU executive to take an alternative approach while Italy, under whose presidency the pact was suspended, was even blunter.
"(Commission President Romano) Prodi once said the pact was stupid and it seems equally stupid to me to head to court," said Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti, who chaired the finance ministers' meeting when the pact was suspended.
The Commission, guardian of EU treaties, is sticking to its guns even as it continues work on ways to improve the pact.
"It was a painful decision, a difficult decision for us to take," Prodi told the European Parliament.
"I'm fully aware that taking the decision does entail consequences, but we had to do it for the simple fact that rules and laws have to be followed."
A bid to strike a balance between the two camps came from European Central Bank governing council member Christian Noyer.
"This issue of a progressive return to budget equilibrium should not be viewed as a clash between Brussels and France," Noyer, also governor of the Bank of France, said in Paris.
"It's really in our interest above anything else."
Brussels can, however, count on at least two allies.
Spanish Economy Minister Rodrigo Rato backed the EU executive's view that the court challenge could be useful.
"If this decision guarantees rules which are transparent and equal for all, as I believe it will, on such an important issue as macroeconomic policy co-ordination, I think it is a decision that can have positive consequences," he said in Madrid.
The Netherlands, a keen advocate of budget discipline, also threw its weight behind the Commission.
"We applaud this decision and we will see what support the Dutch can give to this legal action... We had serious doubts about the legitimacy of the (suspension) decision," said William Lelieveldt, a spokesman for the finance ministry.
However, not all those who backed Brussels last year are fans of its decision to go to court.
Austria, which had originally backed the Commission, appears as opposed to the court challenge as those who voted for the suspension of the Stability Pact.
"I did not think the step of the council (of finance ministers) was right. I now also think the Commission going to the European Court of Justice is wrong," Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said in an interview published in the Die Presse newspaper on Wednesday.
"Politically, I think this is the wrong signal. I think it is wrong if the most important institutions in the EU can only confront each other before the European Court of Justice."
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