The academic literature in the past has frequently highlighted that the European Commission (EC) tends to provide more accurate public finance forecasts compared with national governments, thanks to its neutrality. The recent conflicts regarding the excessive deficit procedure with Romania and...

In this paper, I demonstrate that an indicator which is commonly used to assess the long-term fiscal sustainability of public finances in EU member states (“S2”) is also defined if government borrowing rates are assumed to be permanently lower than the growth rate of GDP. I illustrate this...