2006 Fiscal Notifications of Acceding and Candidate Countries

In this Enlargement Paper the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs publishes its main results of the April 2006 fiscal notifications presented by the acceding and candidate countries. All acceding and candidate countries had to submit fiscal notifications to the Commission services by 1 April 2006, in accordance with the commitments made under the preaccession fiscal surveillance procedure. This notification is the sixth such annual exercise, though only the second for Croatia, a candidate country since June 2004, and the first for the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, a candidate country since December 2005. The framework of the fiscal notifications is now well known. Countries are more or less familiar with the EU legal and methodological principles for the calculation of general government deficits and debt levels. The presentation of the notification tables and in particular the reconciliation between the national budget balance and the balance used in EU fiscal surveillance is now well understood. Significant efforts have been made to provide figures that comply as much as possible with the methodology and coverage required by the fiscal notifications.