EU fiscal rules are meant to keep public finances on a sustainable path. This paper presents a new database that tracks numerical compliance with the four main rules of the Stability and Growth Pact starting in 1998. Our assessment of numerical compliance abstracts from the many exceptions and...

One possible solution to the sovereign debt crisis is the European Redemption Pact (ERP) proposed by the German Council of Economic Experts. The ERP provides sustainable financing conditions for participating sovereigns to facilitate bringing public debt ratios below the reference value of 60%...

Following the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe this spring and subsequent measures to contain the pandemic, the European Commission drastically revised its economic and fiscal forecasts. The Summer 2020 Economic Forecast projects that the euro area economy will contract by 8.7% in 2020. The...

Because they exert cross-border spillover effects, fiscal policies of individual EU member states are a common concern for the entire EU.

Faced with the impossibility of reaching a political agreement to review the fiscal treaties, the Commission could limit itself to applying the current rules with flexibility, which would maintain an ambiguous situation: much ado about nothing.

A number of tools have been suggested for solving the European sovereign debt crisis, in particular the options of leveraging the EFSF/ESM, introducing Eurobonds and a European Troubled Asset Relief Programme (Euro-TARP). However, it is unclear how these instruments will work, given jittery...

This paper presents three simple policies for overcoming the crisis that can be implemented immediately and require none of the moves such as national guarantees or fiscal transfers to which many Europeans are opposed, nor moves towards federation that entail Treaty changes, which electorates...

The economic crisis has given rise to significant challenges to the welfare state. Given that welfare expenses account for a large proportion of all state spending in the member countries of the European Union, reducing government spending means cutting welfare measures. Yet social protection,...