(Bloomberg) -- It’s not a task many would relish, but Romania’s new finance minister wants to wrest control of a budget gap that’s forecast to become the European Union’s widest in the coming years.

Florin Citu, part of a Liberal Party government that only took power last week, will lay out his plans to tackle the deficit on Thursday. He’s already conceded that the 2019 target of 2.8% of gross domestic product is out of reach.

The shortfall, stoked by the previous administration’s spending largess, has become a key test for the new administration, which wants to avoid EU punishment for exceeding the bloc’s fiscal limits.

But closing the gap will be a challenge. Without action, the European Commission predicts it will reach more than 6% of gross domestic product in 2021 -- double its official ceiling.

The projections include the last government’s pledges of double-digit growth in pensions in 2020 and 2021. Dialing back those promises will be hard for Prime Minister Ludovic Orban’s minority cabinet.

“In the absence of corrective measures, the budget deficit will soar to levels that could put Romania under the Excessive Deficit Procedure next year, trigger a negative response from rating agencies and lead to an increase in borrowing costs,” said Eugen Sinca, an economist at Erste Group Bank AG in Bucharest.

The early signs indicate the problem could be even worse than feared.

“We’re discovering new holes in the budget every day,” Orban said. “Issues that require immediate intervention.”In a Facebook post Tuesday, Citu hinted at what his plans may entail by identifying poor tax collection and rosy revenue estimates as other reasons for the ballooning deficit. He faces a tough job, with the gap reaching 21 billion lei ($4.9 billion) in the year through October.

To contact the reporters on this story: Andra Timu in Bucharest at atimu@bloomberg.net;Irina Vilcu in Bucharest at isavu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Andrew Langley

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.