EU Puts 2012 Spanish Deficit at 10.6% of GDP

The European Commission released on Monday final deficit and debt data for eurozone and EU states that was in line with upward revisions announced in late March by key countries such as Spain and France.

The figures showed that Spain posted a 2012 deficit of 10.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), including the cost to the state of recapitalizing broken banks.

Madrid said at the end of March that when this cost was stripped out of the calculation, the public deficit fell to 6.98 percent of GDP.

France, meanwhile, came in at 4.8 percent, a figure also initially published in late March, when the government also revealed that public debt had reached a new record of 90.2 percent of GDP.

The public deficit level for the 17 eurozone states as a whole came in at 3.7 percent of GDP.

Under terms of the EU's Maastricht Treaty, countries are supposed to have public deficits of no more than 3.0 percent of GDP, and debt of no more than 60 percent.