European finance ministers were on Monday night split over plans to weaken the EU's fiscal rules, with some claiming they were designed to help Germany escape punishment for its persistently high deficit.
The new "final" draft of a revamped stability pact contains a clause allowing Berlin to cite the costs of German reunification after 1989 to avoid sanctions under the pact.
The Luxembourg EU presidency also proposed a raft of other measures to help countries avoid penalties when they breach the pact's budget deficit ceiling of 3 per cent of gross domestic product.
Mitigating factors could include higher research spending, higher general investment spending, pensions and health reform and lower-than-expected growth.
The proposal did not meet with universal acclaim.
Karl-Heinz Grasser, Austrian finance minister and Mr Juncker's deputy in the eurogroup, said there was "no way" the costs of Germany's reunification should be part of the equation...
He also warned that allowing "investment expenditure" to be taken into account was another big loophole that could be applied to items such as defence expenditure, a French demand.
Mr Grasser, part of a coalition of smaller EU countries resisting a weakening of the pact, fears the longer the list of mitigating factors, the easier it will be for big countries to bend the pact to their advantage.