It saw the successful end of a full year of negotiations on the European Commission's proposals for six new pieces of European legislation which will fundamentally reshape economic governance in the European Union and, more particularly, in the euro area.
When this legislation enters into force later this year, the EU will have in place a much stronger framework for preventing the economic mistakes that have cast a shadow over the recent past.
We will be able to scrutinise the Member States' public finances, in particular the level of debt, much more carefully and pre-emptively than ever before. This will include co-ordinated examination of economic policies and budgets in the first half of each year before their adoption by national parliaments in a process known as the European Semester. And budgets will have to be designed and presented according to a common framework, in line with best international standards, so that budget-making is more transparent both for citizens and policy-makers.
We have learned important lessons by looking at the roots of the current sovereign debt crisis. So we will be focusing the spotlight tightly on countries whose budget policies put their own and Europe's stability, growth and employment at risk. Thus in the future we will avoid the kind of fiscal crisis we have had to confront in the case of Greece.
At the same time we will be looking more broadly at the macroeconomic situation in each country and paying particular attention to early signs of possible imbalances that could undermine competitiveness and threaten long-term economic health. Read on and comment » | Olli Rehn | Thursday, October 20, 2011
