Welcome to the Euro Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfkak Muncher and with me, Azizana Muncheng and Jack Smith.

Today we will talk about Europe's exploding fiscal deficits. Economic growth is weak. Fiscal positions

are fragile everywhere and we're spending a lot more money on defense and on Ukraine. And we are funding this increase in defense spending mostly through debt.

The big news this week is that one of the Eurozone's most frugal countries has come under

the EU's excessive deficit procedures.

Zazana, tell us what happened in Finland.

Yes, the Democles sword was already over Finland for some time.

Already last year, the European Commission warned.

They were expecting that Finland would be part of the excessive deficit procedure already last year.

But at the time, the European Commission concluded that due to its high military spending,

they get a year off. Now, this year the European Commission, in their verdict, was saying

actually the excesses in their budget is only partly explained by the rise in military spending, and therefore

it's warranted that Finland would enter the excessive deficit procedure. So we have Finland

with a budget capital of 4.4% of GDP, and that is expected to rise to 4.5 percent, according to some sources.

So we have also a plan, sort of the Eritapura, who is the finance minister.

She wants Finland's debt to cap at the 90 percent of GDP by early next year.

But the projections at the moment say that Finland's debt would more likely rise to 92.3% by 2027.

So this goes all in the wrong direction.

Therefore, Finland, the Eternal Hawk, is basically in the excessive deficit procedure. I mean, it's not a singular accident. I think what happens here with Finland are we going to see there in the future?

I mean, Wolfgang You wrote about Germany and the military spending

and how it switched from its deadbreak to a prolific spender.

And eventually we will see that also in the fiscal figures coming up,

...