10 SEPTEMBER 1994, Page 27

Borrowers Anonymous

THE DESTINATION of choice for this weekend is Lindau, where, by a German lakeside, Europe's finance ministers meet for a session of Borrowers Anonymous. At Maastricht they promised to kick the bad habit of borrowing, or at least cut it down. Such was the way to ever closer union or (this year's version) the hard Euro-core. Most of them find it still going. Belgium, which fancies itself in the hard core, owes far more than its gross domestic product (its total output, that is) and Greece, that financial disaster on its way to happen, blithely borrows one-sixth of its GDP year after year after year. Will the virtuous min- isters take the laggards in hand? I doubt it. Vice is in the majority.