Mr. Klaus Regling:

The fiscal policy, as I already said, turned pro-cyclical around 2004. There was a problem on both sides. Expenditures went up but the Deputy's question is mainly on the revenue side. It is also striking that expenditures after 2004 - there is a chart there - were growing faster than nominal GDP. Until then it grew less than nominal GDP so that was one problem. On the revenue side, we mentioned in our report that the share of cyclical taxes like property taxes and sales taxes increased significantly. That makes the system more vulnerable because, with hindsight, we know that these sources of tax revenue disappeared with the crisis. That was a very strong reason the overall fiscal deficit became so big. Unfortunately, with hindsight, that is exactly what happened. The deficit became big because the reliance on cyclical revenue had become so large.