“Sorry, our mistake”, said senior employees of the European Commission, who met in Athens last week to go over fiscal data. According to information in the “Imerisia” newspaper, a high level European Commission delegation looked over all fiscal data.

As stressed by sources in the government's financial staff, the Commission officials noted mistakes in the autumn report of the service in the fiscal deficit sector and the intend to move to the correction of the goal for 2004 to 2% of the GDP from the 2.4% initially announced.

The mistake was located in the proceeds sector, which were indicated as decreased by 1.8% of the GDP in the forecasts of the spring report. This development had been foreseen by Minister of Finanace Nikos Christodoulakis in his statements to the Financial Times, where the Commission mistake had been discovered, both in overestimating proceeds as well as in overestimating expenses.

It should be noted that the new forecast has some distance from those of the Greek government as well as those of other international organizations: In the OECD's annual report on member-states, which is expected to be published on November 27, will raise the deficit for 2004 to 1.5% of the GDP, while in its September report the IMF estimated that it would be around 1.1%. The Greek government's estimate, which will be included in the budget, was about the same, setting the goal for the deficit to be around 1.2%.