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Bulgaria is one of six EU countries that the European Commission has found to be experiencing excessive macroeconomic imbalances, according to a statement on the Commission's website.
According to the European Commission, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Italy and Portugal have excessive imbalances, while Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Slovenia have only “imbalances”.
For this reason, the committee has placed all countries in which some form of instability has been identified under special monitoring, proportionate to the type and scale of the imbalance, it wrote on Thursday.
Monitoring will take place through enhanced dialogue with national authorities, specific missions and assessments of individual countries’ progress, the statement reads.
Last November, the European Commission decided that 18 Member States should undergo an in-depth analysis to determine whether they were experiencing macroeconomic imbalances and, if so, how serious these were. Of those countries, according to the Commission, only six had no problems with imbalances.
No imbalance has been identified in Austria, Estonia, Belgium, Hungary, Romania or the United Kingdom.
Greece and Cyprus, where bailout programmes are currently operating, are not included in this European Commission report. In March and April, the Commission is expected to hold bilateral meetings with Member States to discuss the report's details with the authorities in the respective countries. Individual Member States are required to submit the relevant reform programmes in April.