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Portuguese parliament protests possible sanctions for excessive deficit

Xinhua, June 10, 2016 Adjust font size:

The Portuguese parliament on Thursday approved a document by the Socialist Party condemning possible sanctions by the European Union due to its excessive deficit in 2015.

The Socialist Party, followed by the Social Democrat Party and rightist CDS-PP, sent their proposals to condemn possible sanctions on Wednesday.

EU's statistics agency Eurostat revealed in April that Portugal's deficit was the third highest in the eurozone, ending 2015 at 4.4 percent, due to resolution costs of bank Banif. The country missed its deficit target last year of 2.7 percent and is above the EU ceiling of 3 percent.

Portugal's public debt rose to 129 percent of GDP at the end of 2015, equivalent to 231.36 billion euros (262.15 billion U.S. dollars).

Spain has also been at risk of facing sanctions for an excessive budget deficit, and both countries have made efforts to convince Brussels that this would be unreasonable.

Portugal underwent three years of austerity under a 78 billion euros bailout program the country signed with the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund and European Commission in 2011. Endit