Greek experience to spur EU request for audit powers

Frustrated by the ongoing story of Greece's public finance problems, the European Commission has indicated it will seek audit powers for the EU's statistics office, Eurostat, in order to verify elements of national government accounts.

EU member states have increasingly queried the reliability of statistics leaving Athens after the country's newly elected Socialist government raised its 2009 deficit forecast last October by more than four percentage points to 12.5 percent of GDP.