The Ministry for Finance has denied "in the most categorical terms your report that the Eurogroup meeting held on 8th December 2014 called for any additional measures to the Budget 2015".

In its reply, the Finance Ministry said: "The Eurogroup's recommendations for additional measures were made explicitly on the basis of the Commission Opinion of the Draft Budget 2014 as submitted to the Commission on 15th October 2014. It is pertinent to emphasise that the note on Malta, specifically stated that the forecast of the structural fiscal effort in 2015, is 'based on the no-policy change assumption and does not incorporate the consolidation measures in the 2015 budget'. It is on this basis that recommendation would have been requested."

"In particular the Commission did not take into account the €28 million euro worth of fiscal consolidation measures announced in the actual Budget 2014, together with other measures which are expected to lead to further improvement in the government finances."

"This was also emphasised during the meeting by the President of the Eurogroup when he said that the case of Malta is very specific in relation to the exclusion of these budgetary measures. The Commission's assessment had confirmed that the report is indeed based on a 'no policy change' scenario, and that Malta has since adopted its budget."

"The Government is confident that the Budget 2015 would manage to undertake its required structural effort as it has indeed done during this year. Indeed ECOFIN welcomed Malta's commitment to implement all the 2015 measures as laid out in the Budget," the Ministry concluded.

In reply, author of the article Noel Grima said: "On the contrary, this is the relevant excerpt from the Eurogroup statement issued last Monday with regards to Malta": 

Member states under the preventive arm

• Those member states whose plans are at risk of non-compliance with the rules under the Preventive arm should take, in a timely manner, additional measures as appropriate to address the risks identified by the Commission as regards an appropriate convergence towards the MTO and the respect of the debt rule.
• Malta - we agree with the Commission's assessment that there is a risk for a significant deviation from the adjustment path towards the MTO in 2015, which is required once a timely and sustainable correction of the excessive deficit in 2014 is ensured. We note that according to the latest Commission assessment Malta's structural fiscal effort in 2015 will be -0.2% of GDP, which is based on the no-policy change assumption and does not incorporate the consolidation measures in the 2015 budget, whereas 0.6% of GDP is required under the preventive arm. On that basis, additional measures would be needed to allow for an improvement of the structural effort in order to comply with the rules of the SGP.
• We welcome the commitments of Malta to implement the measures necessary to ensure that the 2015 budget will be compliant with the rules of the preventive arm of the SGP.

"We leave it to the readers to decide who was right," writes Mr Grima.