The European Commission this afternoon denied a German press report that EU finance ministers struck a secret deal at their meeting in Copenhagen last week to postpone the 2004 deadline for getting their budgets close to balance.
Spokesman Mr Gerassimos Thomas said the Wirtschaftswochereport, citing French and German government sources, is not correct.
"The delay in growth acceleration that we have seen is no justification for any change in the economic strategy in the broad economic policy guidelines," Thomas said.
The guidelines, agreed with the commission, require member states to meet the 2004 deadline.
However, since the guidelines were issued, France has made its ability to do so dependent on achieving economic growth of 3 per cent in 2003 and 2004.
French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin last week signalled that France would not meet the deadline, saying growth in 2003 would be below 3 per cent.
The German magazine report said ministers agreed with EU economic and monetary affairs commissioner Mr Pedro Solbes that their programmes of debt reduction should be slowed down "to adapt to the economic situation".
This would mean that governments would only need to balance their budgets "one or two years later", in other words in 2005 or 2006, it said.
In another show of commission determination for member states to honour their pledge, commission president Mr Romano Prodi said: "Budgetary retrenchment will have to resume."
France, Germany, Italy and Portugal would have to make special efforts, Mr Prodi said in a speech in Portugal yesterday.
PA