It seems that it is well on its way there. This spectre of a balanced budget already provokes interest group to pressurize the administration to be less tight fisted and possessed more of a social conscience. The latter determine which of the member countries of the EU will join the Euro single currency zone in the first wave of entrants in 1999. All of them pay a dear economic, political and social price. By restraining the budget deficit, they induce recession or fail to encourage budding economic expansions.
Unemployment rates remain stubbornly high, so do interest rates.
This is the price of adhering to an economic fad. Balanced or low deficits budgets are a good things when the economy is roaring ahead. This Maastricht criterion will prove, in the long run, to be lethal to the very idea of a European Union. It is a program. It charts the government's expenditures and allocates its resources for a period of one fiscal year.