European Parliament 10 December 2002, WRITTEN QUESTION E-3533/02 by Paulo Casaca (PSE) to the Commission. Ignorance regarding the Portuguese budget.

explicitly to the impact of this sectoral deficit on the overall public deficit, the Commission uses new concepts which raise new doubts. Can the Commission therefore clarify what it means by the ‘indication of unusual characteristics likely to compromise compliance with overall budgetary objectives’? Can it also clarify what the threshold is for considering extra-budgetary expenditure ‘unusual’?