EU criticises France over its debt spending at the height of its crucial election campaign

BRUSSELS: The European Union's executive arm on Wednesday criticised France for running up excessive debt, a stinging rebuke that comes at the height of the election campaign where President Emmanuel Macron facing a strong challenge from the extreme right and the left.

France was one of seven nations instructed by the EU Commission to start a so-called “excessive deficit procedure”, the first step in a long process before any member state can be hemmed in and moved to take corrective action.

For decades, the EU has set out targets for member states to keep their annual deficit within 3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product and keep overall debt within 60 per cent of output. During that time, thosesuch targets have been disregarded when it was convenient, sometimes even by countries like Germany and France, the biggest economies in the bloc.

The French annual deficit stood over 5 per cent last year.

Over the past years, exceptional circumstances like the COVID-19 crisis and the war in Ukraine allowed for leniency, but that has now come to an end.

Still, Wednesday's announcement touched a nerve in France, after Macron called snap elections after he lost out to the hard right of Marine Le Pen in the EU parliamentary polls on June 9.

Le Pen's National Rally and a new united left front are polling ahead of Macron's party in the elections, and both challengers have put forward plans where deficit spending to get out of the economic rut is essential.

Apart from France, the EU Commission equally rebuked Italy, Poland, Belgium, Hungary, Malta and Slovakia.