国际英语新闻：EU president says agreement reached on budget sanctions

LUXEMBOURG, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy said on Monday that member states of the European Union (EU) have agreed to apply quasi-automatic sanctions on countries which breach budget rules of the bloc.

After chairing a meeting of EU finance ministers on reinforcing economic governance, Van Rompuy said in a statement that the ministers have agreed on the so-called "reversed majority rule" while applying sanctions against budget-rule breakers.

"For the decision on all new sanctions, the so-called reversed majority rule will apply: the Commission recommendation on sanctions will be adopted unless a qualified majority of member states in the Council vote against it," the statement said.

Monday's meeting is the last before the task force, led by Van Rompuy and composed of EU finance ministers, presents a final report to an EU summit next week on how to reinforce economic governance of the bloc to prevent another sovereign debt crisis.

The statement did not spell out details of the final report to be presented, but said the recommendations and concrete proposals in the report go in five broad directions, among which are broader economic surveillance and greater fiscal discipline.

The European Commission proposed in a communication published at the end of September that a eurozone member state in excessive deficit could face a fine of 0.2 percent of GDP and meanwhile a " reverse voting mechanism" will be applied when imposing sanctions on the offender, which means a sanction will be considered adopted unless the EU Council turns it down by a qualified majority.

EU member states have been at loggerheads over the automatic sanctions. While Germany and the Netherlands are in for automatic sanctions for the budge-rule offenders, a group of member states led by France are reluctant to accept it and have insisted that politicians from the EU member states should have a say in deciding the sanctions.

Hours before the end of the task force meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a joint declaration after their meeting in France, saying that they both agreed sanctions should be more automatic for EU members that fail to cut their excessive deficit.