Eurostat concerned about Greek statistics developments

Page last updated at 03:47 GMT, Friday, February 8, 2013 - 08:47 EST

Bloomberg:

The European Union’s statistics office said it was watching with “deep concern” developments in Greece, where the head of the statistics agency faces felony charges over reporting of the country’s 2009 budget deficit.

Hellenic Statistical Authority data submitted under its current chief, Andreas Georgiou, “have repeatedly passed the stringent quality checks applied by Eurostat to ensure full compliance with European law,” the European Statistical System, an association of national statistics agencies and Eurostat, said in an e-mailed statement today.

Last month, Greece’s economic prosecutors charged Georgiou and two other officials from the agency with inflating the 2009 deficit figure. The country sparked Europe’s debt crisis after former Prime Minister George Papandreou’s government was elected in October 2009 and revealed on taking office that the shortfall was bigger than thought. It was eventually determined to be 15.6 percent of gross domestic product, more than five times the limit allowed under EU rules.

Read the whole story: Bloomberg