The Commission will now open what are called “excessive deficit procedures” against the countries, and will recommend that the European Council takes action to ensure the countries whose budgets exceed limits in the guidelines and had not given satisfactory explanations of the overspending would mend their ways.

“We have analysed the reasons for this situation and concluded that the deficit criterion is not fulfilled in seven Member States: Belgium, France, Italy, Hungary, Malta, Slovakia and Poland,” Valdis Dombrovskis, the executive vice president of the European Commission said.

“This means that, for these Member States, the Commission will propose decisions establishing the existence of an excessive deficit procedure. The Council - the Economic and Financial Committee - will have to provide an opinion on this and we will follow with the next steps in July. After that, the recommendations for correcting the excessive deficits will come in the autumn.

The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Commission stipulates that member states public-debt-to-GDP ratio should not exceed 60%, while their budget deficit should be kept close to 3%.

In the case of Poland, in 2023 the general government deficit was just below 174 billion zloty (€42 bn), which (5.1% of GDP), while the general government debt amounted to 49.6% of GDP.

In 2024 analysts at ING estimate that the Polish budget deficit will reach 5% of GDP. “This is because the Ministry of Finance made too optimistic a forecast of VAT receipts,” Rafał Benecki, the chief economist at ING, wrote in a note.

Poland was included in the European Union’s procedures on excessive deficits once before - in 2004. The procedure was closed only in 2008.