On 22 May 2017, the Commission recommended that the Excessive Deficit Procedures be closed for Croatia and Portugal. If the Council follows the Commission’s recommendation, this would leave only four Member States under the corrective arm of the Pact, down from 24 countries in 2011. The Commission also adopted reports for Belgium and Finland in which it concluded that they are in compliance with the debt criterion of the Treaty. The Commission addressed a warning to Romania on the existence of a significant deviation from the adjustment path toward the medium-term budgetary objective in 2016 and recommended that the Council adopt a recommendation for Romania to take appropriate measures in 2017 to correct the deviation. This is the first time that this procedure of the EU economic governance framework has been applied. The procedure gives the authorities the opportunity to take corrective action in order to avoid the opening of an excessive deficit procedure.