THE EU FISCAL RULES: SOME GUIDELINES FOR REFORM*

independent fiscal supervision authorities. In many cases, the implementation of such proposals is not feasible because it would represent another change in the EU legal setting just after the signature of the Treaty that establishes a Constitution for Europe. Meanwhile, proposals are being advanced by the European Commission, which has the role of initiating legislation at the EU level, and by some member-states, all of them currently under discussion. In this paper some guidelines for the reform of the EU fiscal framework are suggested. Overall, they are close to the ones stemming from the Commission’s proposals, but with differences in emphasis. The underlying rationale is based on the assumption that the corrective arm of the budgetary fiscal framework will not be fully operative. It is therefore necessary to foster the Commission’s ability to assess national fiscal policies, to enhance the statistical framework of the compilation of fiscal data, leading to higher transparency, and to reinforce peer-pressure in the Economic and Financial Committee (EFC) and the Ecofin Council as well as market and public opinion scrutiny of governments’ fiscal policies. These proposals are based on the past experience of the EU fiscal framework and take into consideration the existing institutional constraints.