Macron Told to Improve Finances

France may no longer be the eurozone’s deficit dunce but President Emmanuel Macron must do more to improve the country’s finances “if he wants to be the leader in Europe”, the EU’s economy commissioner said Sunday, AFP reported. France has long been in the EU’s crosshairs over its deficit, which has repeatedly overshot an EU limit of 3% of gross domestic product. Macron, who is pushing for a profound transformation of the EU, has slashed public spending in a bid to restore France’s credibility, driving down the deficit to an estimated 2.9% in 2017—the first time in a decade it will come in at under 3%. In an interview with France’s Europe 1 radio Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici urged Macron not to rest on his laurels and to continue reforming France’s big-spending ways. “The average deficit in the eurozone is not 2.8 or 2.7%, it’s 0.9%,” he noted. The French government has forecast a deficit of 2.8% in 2018—a figure seen as somewhat optimistic by Brussels which expects it to remain at 2.9% before inching back up to 3% in 2019.