"The Parliament has passed the final baton to the Council to deliver a comprehensive economic governance package." said ALDE Leader Guy Verhofstadt, following last night's final trialogue between the EU institutions to agree on an economic governance package. "Parliament's negotiating team have made progress on the content: for example the Council has accepted that sanctions must be applied in cases of statistical fraud. Nevertheless agreement is not yet in place. The Council should make one last effort and accept genuine automatic sanctions, subject to reversed qualified majority, for those countries that do not comply with the Stability and Growth Pact." he concluded.

Referring to last night achievements, ALDE coordinator for the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee and Parliament's rapporteur on effective enforcement of budgetary surveillance in the euro area, Sylvie Goulard (MoDem, France) said:

"If this package as amended by the European Parliament is adopted, the economic governance of the euro area would be improved. By linking the Stability Pact to the European Semester and introducing an economic dialogue between the EU Institutions and the Member States we have laid down the foundations for effective economic policy coordination in the EU.

Furthermore to foster the role of the Euro as a reserve currency we have obtained from the Commission the commitment to work towards the common issuance of bonds."

Carl Haglund, (Svenska Folkpartiet, Finland), Parliament's rapporteur on the enforcement measures for macroeconomic imbalances in the economic governance package said:
 
"The new macroeconomic surveillance is a significant achievement where the Parliament succeeded in strengthening the framework during the negotiations. Initially it was foreseen that a Member State would be allowed to fail twice before corrective action is taken. Thanks to the agreement reached yesterday an interest-bearing deposit will be imposed after a first failure by a Member State to deliver promised corrective action. This will increase the pressure on Member States to actually deal with macroeconomic imbalances instead of sweeping them under the carpet".