The Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee in the European Parliament believes that the latest proposals from EU finance ministers for the EU economic governance package are insufficient. Committee chair Sharon Bowles stated that the Committee leaves the door opened for a farther vote in July, so the Council can come back with an improved offer.

The EP Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee agreed that ministers have not done enough to prevent EU countries' budgets from derailing and were backtracking on commitments to also look at high-export countries as sources of imbalances. Committee chair Sharon Bowles underlined that although the negotiated text includes a lot of Parliament's ideas, it does not go far enough, in particular on Reversed Qualified Majority Voting. She added that it has also been particularly aggravating to the Parliament that France and Germany, the two countries that weakened the stability and growth pact, joined forces to resist the very measure that would do most to prevent such future undermining.

One of the main divergence points is whether to introduce reversed qualified majority (RQMV) voting in Article 6(2) of the text amending regulation 1466/97. With this measure, the Council would have to vote to reject, rather than simply ignore, the Commission's recommendations for remedial action with regard to fiscal policy. This would make it far easier for the Commission to point out that a Member State has not taken the suggested remedial action, the step directly preceding financial sanctions. According to MEPs, without such a clause, it will be very difficult to get to the stage where the imposition of financial sanctions can be used as a threat to bring about corrective action.

After a debate on this topic, Parliament will put the texts which it negotiated with the Hungarian Presidency to a plenary vote now in June. An amendment will also be tabled to include automaticity in the preventative part of the stability and growth pact. The vote will however stop short of closing the first reading, in order to allow talks to continue in earnest with a view to clinching a deal as soon as possible.