Public finances in Europe: fortifying EU economic governance in the shadow of the crisis

Abstract

The Eurozone crisis resulted in a decisive change of Europe’s fiscal surveillance regime that brought the question of public finance oversight sharply into focus. The Stability and Growth Pact, the fiscal cornerstone of Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), was fortified, expanded and supplemented by the so-called ‘Six Pack’, the ‘Fiscal Compact’ and the ‘Two Pack’. These substantial initiatives all aimed at strengthening the credibility and enforceability of the EMU’s rules-based economic coordination regime through further formal competence transfer and an improvement of the EU’s problem-solving capacity. This article explains that from a process perspective, their adoption showed an ability of the EU polity to produce agreement and find a way out of its chronic institutional paralysis.