The Maastricht Treaty signed in 1992 envisaged the creation of the euro. This act created the possibility of conducting multilateral fiscal surveillance within the European Union. Current provisions regarding the excessive deficit procedure (EDP) are defined by the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (UFEU) from 2012. Council Regulation (EC) No 479/2009, as amended by Council Regulation (EU) No 679/2010 and Commission Regulation (EU) No 220/2014, requires that EU Member States report EDP-related data to Eurostat twice per year at end-March and end-September. The data are presented in harmonised tables (EDP Notification Tables). These tables are designed specifically to provide a consistent framework related to the national accounts aggregates and the relation between net lending/borrowing and changes in the government debt. The EDP data should be fully consistent with the government finance statistics obtained through the Transmission Programme of ESA 2010. The reference values for the government deficit and debt are based on the concepts defined in the ESA 2010. The government deficit (surplus) refers to the net lending/net borrowing (EDP B.9) of the general government sector (S.13), defined by the ESA 2010 as the difference between total revenue and total expenditure. The general government debt is defined as the gross nominal value of the debt at the end of the year. The debt refers to the units classified into the general government sector (S.13) according to the official sector classification and it consists of the following financial instruments: currency and deposits (AF.2), debt securities (AF.3) and loans (AF.4), as defined by the ESA 2010 and the Manual on Government Deficit and Debt.
