Open Issues On the Implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact

Now that the budget deficits in the Euro Area are approaching balance, the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) looks like a largely non-constraining institutional framework with little impact on national fiscal policies. This article challenges this view and argues that the implementation of the SGP 'at cruising speed' is faced with a number of outstanding issues: safeguarding the automatic stabilisers under the SGP; coping with the consequences of the asymmetric nature of the SGP for the co-ordination of macroeconomic policies; and ensuring the long-run sustainability of public finances. It concludes that enlarging the scope and enhancing the credibility of the stability and convergence programmes to become a true instrument of fiscal policy coordination in the Euro Area would be a first step in lifting the uncertainties surrounding the implementation of the SGP