Germany and France breached it in 2002. It now seems that the Netherlands and the United Kingdom joined France and Germany in 2003, and the European Commission predicts that in 2004 Italy, Portugal and Greece may also exceed the 3% limit.
Thus half of the euro area countries now find that they have no budgetary room for manoeuvre and most of them have to consolidate their public finances during a period of still relatively weak economic growth.