The euro is irreversible but it needs reform to address well-known design deficiencies and also new challenges. Although progress has been made, further steps are needed, the most important of which are: revision of the fiscal rules, establishing a central stabilisation capacity, and completing...

While the European Union (EU) fiscal rules are suspended in the years 2020–2022, new rules are in the making and might be activated in 2023. If the old rules were used again, massive austerity would be required in the face of the strongly elevated level of public debt and the gap to the 60 per...

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...

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...

On 5-6 September 2012 SUERF held its 30th Colloquium “States, Banks, and the Financing of the Economy” at the University of Zürich, Switzerland. The papers included in this SUERF Study are based on contributions to the Colloquium. All the chapters in this publication discuss from different...

Current developments in Greece make clear that the rules of the European Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) were neither strict enough nor enforced strictly enough. To deal with the ongoing fiscal exit and its related phenomena of crisis, we propose a new framework for fiscal policy consolidation...

This paper evaluates the Stability and Growth Pact. After examining the rules in place and the experience so far, the Pact is analysed from a political economy perspective, focusing on the choice for so-called soft law and drawing inferences from characteristics of successful fiscal rules at the...

We analyze motivations for, and possible alternatives to, the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). With regard to the former, we identify domestic policy failures and various cross-country spillover effects; with regard to the latter, we contrast an economic-theory perspective on optimal corrective...

The recent extensive package introduced by the Commission is the most comprehensive reinforcement of economic governance in the EU and the euro area since the launch of the Economic and Monetary Union. Broader and enhanced surveillance of fiscal policies, but also macroeconomic policies and...

The current instruments in the EU to deal with debt and liquidity crises include among others the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM). Both are temporary in nature (3 years). In terms of an efficient future crisis management...