The European fiscal governance framework remains incomplete, hindering policy coordination during economic shocks and affecting the transmission of the single monetary policy. High public debt and low public investment worsen resilience across Member States. Many policymakers, institutions, and...

The European fiscal governance framework remains incomplete, hindering policy coordination during economic shocks and affecting the transmission of the single monetary policy. High public debt and low public investment worsen resilience across Member States. Many policymakers, institutions, and...

This paper presents a detailed analysis of fiscal frameworks across the six Western Balkan economies utilizing a newly compiled dataset based on the European Commission's Fiscal Governance Database. The analysis reveals that although all six Western Balkan countries have implemented some form of...

Public investment has been low in recent years, resulting in shortcomings in infrastructure and other public assets capable of underpinning economic growth and competitiveness. Efforts at the EU level to establish a Sovereignty Fund intended to enhance competitiveness and to respond to the likes...

This paper reviews the main arguments underpinning the reform of the EU's fiscal framework, which has culminated in the adoption by the EU legislators of a revised set of rules for the European economic governance including the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). It takes a chronological approach...

The debate on the reform of the European Union's fiscal rules, the Stability and Growth Pact, has largely focused on their design. This nearly exclusive focus has distracted attention from the equally, if not more, important aspects of implementation. The reform, completed in April 2024, left...

In 2020, in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact were temporarily suspended in the European Union. Nevertheless, the European Council and the European Parliament reached an agreement for the reactivation of these rules in 2024. A simple analytical...

The stabilizing expenditure rule (SER) in Poland has been instrumental in fostering fiscal discipline in the years leading up to the pandemic. The pandemic and subsequent shocks severely tested the expenditure rule. Returning to the SER limit after severe shocks proved challenging, making clear...

This article looks at the measures that were adopted in response to the Euro crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic and their implications for accountability and democratic legitimacy in the area of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The discussion begins with the legitimacy issues that were facing...

This paper proposes a central fiscal capacity for the euro area that generates transfers in response to eurozone, country, and region-specific shocks. Themain novelty of this fiscal capacity is that it allows a joint response to these three types of shocks within a single scheme. Based on NUTS3...

At the outset of the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), financial instability spread around the world. In response to potential euro funding stresses outside the euro area, on June 25, 2020, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced the Eurosystem Repo Facility for Central Banks (EUREP). The...

Social Europe is back on the political agenda - as a result of severe economic crises, prior austerity policies and a change in the European discourse framework. Six years after being announced, the European Pillar of Social Rights - although legally non-binding - has become the central...

This paper assesses the progress made towards the creation of the European Banking Union (EBU) and the evolution of the banking industry in the European Union since the financial crisis of 2007. We review major regulatory changes pertaining to the three pillars of the EBU and the effects of new...

In the new European Union fiscal framework proposed by the European Commission in April 2023, medium-term fiscal adjustment requirements would be determined by country-by-country debt sustainability analysis (DSA), the 3 percent deficit ceiling and simple rules requiring minimum deficit and debt...

This paper analyses the compliance patterns of the European fiscal rules of the public debt and budget deficit in a group of twelve Member States. The aim is to make a contrafactual analysis to the compliance of those rules from 2020 to 2022 in a hypothetical scenario without the Covid-19...

This paper aims to assess the impact of the second-generation numerical fiscal rules on the effectiveness of public debt management in the Member States of the European Union. The research was conducted using dynamic panel models on a sample of 27 EU Member States over the period 2008-2021. The...

The European Commission has recently published legislative proposals for a reform of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). The declared object is to make the economic governance of the EU simpler, improve national ownership, place a greater emphasis on the medium term and strengthen enforcement....

An einer Reform des europäischen Stabilitäts- und Wachstumspakts wird man nicht vorbeikommen. Bei keinem diskutierten Reformmodell ist aber zu erwarten, dass sich die Einhaltung der öffentlichen Haushaltsdisziplin besser als zuvor durchsetzen lässt. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird in diesem...

The importance of monetary and fiscal policy in reducing uncertainty during the Eurozone Crisis has been a controversial topic, hampered in part by the lack of data and thus empirical evidence. First, we add a database to this discussion that comprises daily official data on every policy action...

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) provide opportunities for a more flexible and market-based provision of public services. At the same time, they may impair fiscal transparency and offer politicians discretion in the presence of strict fiscal rules if these only constrain the core udget. Using a...

In this paper, we examine the nonlinear relationship between the number of fiscal rules in place and compliance with the European Union (EU) numerical fiscal targets included in the Stability and Growth Pact. Using a sample composed of 27 EU Member States for a period spanning 2000 to 2021, we...

The Communication by the European Commission to reform the Economic Governance Framework offers welcome headspace for public investment, while avoiding the de jure adoption of a 'targeted Golden Rule' as this could conflict with national accounting conventions. However, even with this reform,...

The Communication by the European Commission to reform the Economic Governance Framework offers welcome headspace for public investment, while avoiding the de jure adoption of a 'targeted Golden Rule' as this could conflict with national accounting conventions. However, even with this reform,...

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing debate regarding the reform of the EU fiscal framework, with a special focus on fiscal sustainability for Greece. Our key policy proposals for the EU fiscal rules draw on lessons from past experience, the conclusions of relevant studies and...

Proposals for Eurozone reform aim to complete its institutional architecture by securing stability without creating moral hazard. Such policy arguments inevitably rely, however, on implicit assumptions about justice, or on what is owed to whom. A common assumption is that member states are...

This paper proposes a new approach to EMU governance and integration consisting of the following elements: (i) an optimal use of the existing EU institutional framework for economic, fiscal and financial policies is necessary and possible at each level of EMU integration that is politically...

Despite four year of unprecedented fiscal consolidation efforts, Greece does not yet have (national) numerical fiscal rules, which could help contain primary expenditure and anchor expectations about public finances in Greece. This paper examines practical aspects associated with the...

This paper proposes a central fiscal capacity for the euro area that generates transfers in response to eurozone, country, and region-specific shocks. The main novelty of this fiscal capacity is that it allows a joint response to these three types of shocks within a single scheme. Based on NUTS3...

The decline of “natural real interest rates” during the last three decades is a common phenomenon in all advanced economies and can be explained by a number of structural factors: the downward trend in potential growth; population ageing, which has led to higher savings rates in many...