EU Member countries have shown different degrees of ambition to reach a budget position of ""close to balance or in surplus"". Differences in ambition can only partly be explained by the relative size of cyclical safety mar-gins or differences in the number of votes in the ECOFIN Council. It is...

The paper analyzes one important aspect of the constitutional debate: the allocation of econornie competences between the EU and the mernber states. It takes the theory of fiscal federalism as a starting point for an optimal allocation of economic competences. The main message of the theory is...