A plan "aiming to protect, in the short term, the families’ work and spending power from the effects of the crisis and to strengthen reforms" in the medium term. Expectations are growing for "the adoption of a broad EU-wide stimulus action plan" to fight the recession, planned by the EU Commission for today. The initiative was announced on October 29th by president José Manuel Barroso, who had given a preview of some of the contents of the plan, such as "nationwide and EU-wide coordinated measures", "expediting, for instance, part of the payments of the structural funds". Barroso himself had explained that the proposed actions "are part of the Stability and Growth Pact, making the most of its flexibility". And it is precisely on the flexibility of the Maastricht criteria that French president Nicolas Sarkozy (current president of the EU) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel share the same view. The proposal they announce for the mid-December summit of the 27 member states aims at postponing the full implementation of the Maastricht criteria to 2011, allowing the countries "to overshoot their budgets", cutbacks in taxes, state subsidies to businesses, reductions in consumption taxes to boost spending. The EU Executive’s plan includes instead a specific role for the European Bank, "which has already set 30 billion euros aside for the small-sized companies".
