"Der EU-Fiskalpakt steht für Instabilität und wirtschaftliche Stagnation"

...the European Stability and Growth Pact ... seems to be delivering exactly the opposite of what the name of the title suggests: Instability and lack of growth.

European countries agreed to limit their government deficits and government debt (to 3% and 60% respectively) as part of the Maastricht Treaty that led to the creation of the Euro. The limits were not strictly enforced...

The constraints on fiscal policy were made more explicit through the Stability and Growth Pact that ... developed ... more specific interpretations of the limits as well as a process to deal with deviations from the rule. The Pact was a failure with many countries (including Germany) going above the deficit and debt limits. The rules were then rewritten once and just last weekend, during the European summit, there has been a proposal to rewrite them once again. This is what some have referred to as a proposal to create a fiscal union, which is clearly not the case. The proposal is simply about changing the enforcement rules of the Pact.

Academics have written extensively on how the Stability and Growth Pact was poorly designed and could not work (my own work can be found here, here or here. The criticisms can be summarized by the following three points:

- simple numerical limits are "too simple" to deal with fiscal policy. Applying the same rules to every country and every year makes no sense. And the moment you open the door for exceptions then the rules lose their meaning.
- enforcement of the Stability and Growth Pact does not work because the enforcers is the same group as the sinners. ...
- ...even if fines are applied, what would happen to a country in trouble (Italy today) if the other European countries imposed a fine on the Italian government? That their deficit would be even larger and it would simply make things worse. [...]

And here is where we are today: starting with the concern about long-term sustainability we conclude that short-term austerity is the right policy for all European countries. But imposing coordination combined with a short-term focus on what should be a long-term goal will not deliver stability or growth. It will lead to stagnation in the region and instability in some countries as fiscal policy is not allowed to play a proper countercyclical role.

Quelle: Antonio Fatas