The bit that probably make GP puzzled - out of the EURO countries, only Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovakia matches those requirements. O

The bit that probably make GP puzzled - out of the EURO countries, only Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovakia matches those requirements. Or less than 20 millions out the 330 million people living in the EURO zone.[0] The Debt-To-GDP ratio is a mess. You can see the combined effect of austerity and crisis on some economies. And countries like France have only been twice within the target and not recently. [1] At the end of the day, as many things with the EU, the real rule is around the interpretation of what means "satisfactory pace" and "exceptional cases" - which is regular political hidden under a layer of pseudo-righteous mathematics. (which is not unusual at all for an international treaty) [0] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&language=en&pcode=teina225&plugin=1 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&l... [1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=teina200 http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1...