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French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said measures to curb and cut budget deficit throughout the eurozone must come with essential policies favourable to growth of the economy.

“This budget consolidation should be accompanied by a greater contribution of European policy for growth”, the premier’s office quoted the PM as saying.

The European Commission unveiled on Wednesday plans to better organise economic standards in the eurozone, which included measures to intensify the control and supervision of national funds.

Fillon “hopes that the concrete European project can be identified in the EU’s 2020 economic strategy, in a bid to help European enterprises to compete globally in the future”, the prime minister’s statement said.

Early in March, the commission presented a novel growth strategy called “Europe 2020”, which centres on investment in innovation and research, employment, green growth, and education.

Among the examples of the growth strategy include digital equipment and services, the need for a true industrial policy, and a better access for small and medium-sized businesses in public control.

“Europe should also, through its economic strategy, promote the states’ efforts for social inclusion and against poverty”.

The French premier emphasised that EU member states must ensure the efficient operation of the European stabilisation scheme.

“This implies a strengthened governance of the eurozone and a return to sound public finance, with monitoring mechanism reinforced and extended to macroeconomic imbalances and the competitiveness disparity”, the statement added.

The commission proposed the reinforcement of EU Stability and Growth Pact that controls the supervision of budget deficits. The EU pact necessitates national deficits below the 3% GDP limit and public debts lower than 60% of GDP.

France strikes back at the European Commission for imposing an early ban on Mediterranean tuna fishing.

On June 13 the commission called for a halt to industrial fishing of bluefin tuna due to low stocks. Mediterranean tuna is highly valued especially in some Oriental cuisines such as the Japanese sushi.

French Fisheries Minister Michel Barnier opposed EU’s judgment and asked the commission “to explain its decision in an intelligible way”.

In response to protests, Fisheries Commissioner Joe Borg said that there have been “countless failures to properly implement the rules, which have been agreed at international level, to manage the bluefin stock sustainably”.

He also said the commission knew about the fishing activities which had violated rules regarding tuna fishing. One example is that of eight purse seine trawlers that had consumed almost three weeks fishing since the season started, but had “so far declared no catches”.

Yet, eight similar Italian vessels had “according to official figures, overshot their quota by between 100 and 240%”, Borg said.

He added that around eight spotter planes had been used to assist trawlers in locating bluefin tuna shoals, “even though the use of spotter planes is completely illegal”.

Mr. Barnier denied the reports and told the French weekly newspaper Le Journal de Dimanche that “the commission’s figures are based on estimates or projections more than on facts”.

He claimed that at the time the commission imposed its ban, “only 52% of France’s quotas were full”.

On June 17 around 300 French and Italian fishermen protested in Malta in response to the fishing ban, threatening to block the harbours of the island nation if the commission refused to hear their concerns.

EU fisheries ministers are scheduled to convene Tuesday regarding the issue.