(Bloomberg) -- The European Union’s most indebted countries were urged by the bloc’s advisory watchdog to rein in spending largess and shrink deficits judged by officials to be far too expansive.

In a report Wednesday, the Brussels-based European Fiscal Board said the five nations in the region deemed as “high risk in the medium term” — Belgium, Greece, Spain, France and Italy — must try harder to repair their public finances.

Such countries “should seize the opportunity to make an extra effort to reduce their underlying budget deficits,” its officials wrote. “National fiscal policies should address the underlying expenditure drift while protecting investment.”

The report projected the greatest sense of urgency since the board was created in 2016 in reforms following the region’s sovereign debt crisis. 

Its publication coincides with heightened scrutiny of France’s public finances at a time when Sunday’s election there may prompt outcomes that, according to a Scope Ratings report on Wednesday, could pressure the country’s credit status.

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“Overall, the EFB considers a sizable restrictive fiscal impulse in 2025 is appropriate,” the report said. “This would also help preserve the relatively benign assessment of sovereign risks by financial markets.”

In a briefing, Mateusz Szczurek, Poland’s former finance minister and one of the board’s five members, warned of the consequences of not protecting fiscal sustainability given that market discipline can be brutal, with the capacity to topple governments.

The report lamented that deficits in some euro-area members will be wider than previously anticipated, and suggested that both voters’ expectations and politicians’ responses were to blame.

“Growing demands from the population for higher government expenditure to protect against adverse events in the post-pandemic period are accompanied by a situation in which attention to sustainable public finances has deteriorated significantly in several member states,” the officials said.

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