France warns won’t meet EU deficit targets as steps up security spending

PARIS- France warned on Tuesday that it would not meet its EU deficit obligations as it steps up spending on security in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that the government was planning to hire an additional 8,500 law enforcement officers and France’s EU-agreed spending limits might be exceeded as these resources won’t be taken from other budgets. “We have to do this and Europe should understand this,” Valls said.“It is also time that the European Union (EU) and the European Commission understand today that this battle concerns France and also Europe,” he said.France had already stepped up strikes on Islamic State, which claimed the Paris attacks - bombing the group’s strongholds in Raqa in northern Syria - and asked for more military support from its EU partners.EU defence officials quickly backed the request for military assistance and commission officials signaled leniency on budget rules. “The rules of the stability pact do not stop member states from defining their priorities. We understand that the priority is security,” EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said during his news conference.The EU’s stability pact obliges member states to keep their public deficits under 3.0 percent of gross domestic product. The Eurozone states with excessive deficits are subject to fines if they are not making substantial efforts to bring them back down.