Hope for final ECOFIN on Pact by year's end - Giorgetti

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 8 - Progress has been made on negotiations for the new European Stability and Growth Pact and it is to be hoped that a conclusion can be reached at a special ECOFIN meeting before the end of the year, Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said on Friday.
    On the reform of the EU's new fiscal rules, the minister said "we have made progress, but we are not at the final agreement".
    "Specific special conditions for a transitional period must be ensured," he added during the public ECOFIN session in Brussels.
    There must be coherence "between the proposed fiscal rules" and "the strategic political objectives set out at European level" on "defence and security and the challenge of climate change that we must tackle by sustaining investments", said Giorgetti.
    "The hope is of course to reach a conclusion as soon as possible in an extraordinary ECOFIN before the end of the year," he concluded.
    Friday had initially been set as the deadline for the end of negotiations for the new budget rules to be applied across all EU member states.
    If an agreement is not reached the old rules, suspended in 2020 during the Covid 19 pandemic, will come back into force next year. (ANSA).