Moscovici: EU understands French budget priorities after Paris attacks

Moscovici: EU understands French budget priorities after Paris attacks
By Euronews
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France is bound to overshoot its European Union budget deficit target as it boosts security spending in the wake of last Friday’s attacks in Paris –

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France is bound to overshoot its European Union budget deficit target as it boosts security spending in the wake of last Friday’s attacks in Paris – so says the prime minister.

The government is altering its budget plans after President Hollande promised to hire thousands more police as part of plans to reinforce security, which it’s estimated will cost hundreds of millions of euros.

Referring to the EU’s three percent deficit limits, Prime Minister Manuel Valls told France Inter radio:
“They will inevitably be exceeded because the resources we’re going to put into the security forces will not be at the expense of other budgets, we need to accept that and Europe must understand it. It’s also time for the European Union, for the Commission to understand today that it’s a combat which concerns France but which concerns Europe as well.”

The EU had warned France that it would not meet its targets in 2017 – based, it said, on figures submitted before the atrocities.

But the bloc will respond sympathetically, the Economics Commissioner Pierre Moscovici has replied.

The rules of the stability pact were not rigid and stupid, he said, they were intelligent and flexible – and not incompatible with security needs.

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