PM Ansip suggests Maastricht revision

2008-12-24
TBT online staff

TALLINN- Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip has suggested that the criteria set forth by the Maastricht treaty regarding euro accession may be too severe.

"Maybe it is time to re-evaluate, change the interpretation of the Maastricht inflation criteria," Ansip told Reuters.

As it currently stands, in order to ascend to the euro zone, the country may not have an inflation higher than the average of the top three nations in the group of 27. There is a 1.5 percent added leeway as well.

While prices have gone down from 9.8 percent to 8 percent in the last year, inflation is still too high to imply long term price stability according to the European Central Bank.

Ansip said that Estonia did not have full control over inflation as they cannot be responsible for oil and energy prices.

He also added that a slowing of inflation in other EU member states would make it even harder for Estonia to decrease its consumer price growth and bring it down to the necessary level as outlined by the treaty.

Prime Minister Ansip also said that it will be very difficult to achieve the targets by the 2010 deadline and that the government was already reviewing other dates for the accession to the euro zone.