Mr. John McCarthy:

EUROSTAT purely measures the deficit position. The legal and procedural implications are in the remit of the Commission and the Council. I stress that the investment clause we are talking about here only applies in the preventive arm of the pact. If a country's deficit is greater than 3%, it cannot apply the investment clause. Even within the preventive arm of the pact a country must have negative GDP growth or a negative output gap in excess of 1.5% of GDP. It needs to build in a safety margin with respect to the 3%, therefore, it is not a free for all on the investment side.