With respect to the proposals advanced to make the debt criterion operational, the Commission’s suggestion of allowing excessive deficit procedures for insufficient debt reduction (vis-à-vis an annual 1/20 reduction of the excess over the 60 per cent standard for  5  4  See Franco and Zotteri (2010).
BIS Review 165/2010  the debt-to-GDP ratio over a three-year period) has been praised for its automaticity as well as its simplicity. It has been argued that “the practical translation” of the debt principle is “elegant, but short-termist”, even if this “way of turning around the 60% nonsense is undoubtedly clever”.