The European Commission sues Greece

The European Commission will take Greece to court over its failure to claim back illegal tax breaks given to several companies.

According to an announcement made yesterday by the European Commission, companies would get tax breaks for operations such as car manufacturing, mining, and fishing, but the Brussels authorities later ruled that such tax breaks, of over 200 million Euros, (272 million dollars), were in violation of EU regulations.

The Commission announced that the Greek government failed to convince the European authorities that the tax breaks given to companies were claimed back, and as such will call Greece before the European Court of Justice.

"The Commission will take all the necessary steps to ensure that all member states respect their obligations of claiming back tax breaks", said the European Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Almunia.

• Greece: Italy did more than Greece to mask the state of its finances

Italy did more than Greece to mask the state of its finances to secure euro zone entry, Greek deputy prime-minister Theodoros Pangalos said.

Greece entered foreign currency swaps with American investment banks, which allowed it to conceal its level of debt and budget deficit, in order to allow it to access the Eurozone. The EU asked Greece to present information on the swap agreements.

"You simply put some amounts of money in the next year ... it is what everybody did and Greece did it to a lesser extent than Italy for example", Pangalos said, in an interview for the BBC.

On the other hand, Pangalos criticized Germany"s attitude towards the Greek crisis.

On Tuesday, a German minister said that Greece needs to come out of this crisis alone rather than expect a rescue from Germany or the European Union. Pangalos said: "Athens received no compensation for the economic impact of the Nazi occupation during WW2. They took our gold from Bank of Greece, they took our money and they never gave it back. This is an issue that we will have to approach, sometime in the future", he said.

"I"m not necessarily saying that they should be giving back the money, but they should at least say < thanks >," he said.

• The EU leadership is very poor, Greek deputy prime-minister says

According to Theodoros Pangalos, Greece would have not reached its current point had there been stronger leadership within the EU.

"The quality of leadership today in the Union is very, very poor," he said, adding that it had been better in the 1980s when Jacques Delors headed the European Commission and Helmut Kohl, Francois Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher were in power in Germany, France and Britain.