Chancellor Angela Merkel’s junior coalition partner said on Sunday Germany must not allow France to break the European Union’s debt rules and it warned the European Central Bank against buying up sovereign bonds in response to Italy’s inconclusive election, Reuters reported.
“The announcement of the Socialist president of France that he would take on more debt than allowed must not lead to a breach of the fiscal pact,” the Free Democrats’ parliamentary group chief, Rainer Bruederle, told a party convention.
“At the very least, we should not encourage France on this,” he said. “We must take heed because the fiscal pact breakers are out and about once more.”
France’s Socialist government admitted last month that it would fail to bring its budget deficit below an EU ceiling of three per cent of economic output this year as it had previously hoped.