During Monday's meeting MEPs from the economic committee and regional development committee discuss possible sanctions for Spain and Portugal for not doing enough to reduce their budget deficits. Under the EU treaties and the Stability and Growth Pact, which seeks to ensure sound public finances in all member states, the budget deficit should be below the threshold of 3% of the gross domestic product, or at least declining at a satisfactory pace.

In July the Council said that the two countries had not taken effective action to correct their excessive deficits. This would mean that the countries could receive fines and have structural and investment funds suspended. However, the European Commission recommended and the Council agreed that no fines should be imposed because of the difficult economic environment. Before any decision is taken on the possible suspension of funds, the Parliament needs to be consulted and this is what Monday's committee meeting in Strasbourg is about.

During Tuesday's plenary debate MEPs will look at the progress of reforms in Greece, a country struggling with high budget deficits and an elevated level of accumulated debt.

About the infographic

Our infographic shows the size of the budget deficits or surpluses of EU countries since 1999, the year when the corrective rules of the Stability and Growth Pact entered into force. The data can be browsed by year (with a bubble representing the numbers for each member state for a given year) or by country (showing the data over the years for only one country).

The size of the bubble illustrates how big the deficit or surplus was as a percentage of the gross domestic product, while the colour shows whether the country had a surplus (blue), a small deficit of up to 3% of the gross domestic product (green), or a large deficit of more than 3% (red).

As the infographic shows, once the crisis started in 2008, many countries began running big deficits. This was due to higher social spending because of the rising unemployment, while in some countries banks were bailed out with public money and tax revenue dropped, as the economy slowed down. Many countries have since reined in their deficits, but some are still struggling.