2 januari 2004, 12:17
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Europees Commissaris
Geregistreerd: 28 februari 2003
Locatie: Podgorica
Berichten: 6.351
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Volgende tekst over het stabiliteit- en groeipact geschreven door Paul De Grauwe verscheen vorig jaar in 'the Financial Times'.
Ik vind de voorstellen hiervan een stuk beter dan de huidige regeling. Wat is jullie mening?
Citaat:
The pact should be replaced and not mourned
Published in the Financial Times, Thursday, November 27, 2003
The Stability and Growth Pact is dead. This is bad for those who believe that pacts and treaties should be respected. But its death also shows that agreements should be intelligent and perceived to be in the national interest. This was not the case with the Stability and Growth Pact.
Why did this happen? The pact identified an important problem: unsustainable government debt levels can lead to debt crises, which are especially damaging in a monetary union. Three countries Belgium, Italy and Greece with debt ratios exceeding 100 per cent of gross domestic product came close to unsustainable debt levels. For these countries it made sense to use drastic medicine aimed at reducing the debt levels. For them, the pact's medicine of maintaining a balanced budget over the business cycle and of punishing the trespassers of the magical 3 per cent deficit rule was appropriate. It was not, however, for the others, including France and Germany.
These countries have reasonable debt levels and it did not make sense to subject them to a rule that pushes their debt ratios towards zero, and threaten them with heavy fines when the deficits exceed 3 per cent. This medicine was intended for the critically ill, not for the healthy.
The pact was not intelligent for another reason. Modern nations have a lot of responsibilities to their citizens. These responsibilities are stretched during a recession when citizens expect the social insurance mechanisms to function. The rigidity of the pact was blind to this.
If nothing is done and the pact remains unchanged, it will be very bad for Europe. The pact will inevitably be invoked again in the future, leading to new fights and recriminations. We have to do better.
What should such a new pact look like? First, since countries have very different debt levels, they should be each treated differently. This means that countries whose debt exceeds more than 100 per cent of GDP should follow different budgetary policy rules from countries with sustainable debt levels. The approach of the old stability pact applying the same medicine to all sick or healthy, should be abandoned.
Second, the pact should have more flexibility. A rule that requires countries to lower their social security responsibilities during recessions will not last because in a monetary union, governments have lost an instrument of policy.
How should we implement these principles? In the new pact, countries would define the debt levels that they find appropriate, and that will not lead them into a debt crisis. This should be a national decision, but the new pact would define a maximum, which may or may not be 60 per cent, as in the Treaty of Maastricht. Individual countries would then target this debt level over the business cycle, allowing for some flexibility on both sides.
Let us take an example. Suppose that in a new pact a country targets a 50 per cent debt-to-GDP ratio, which is very different from the present 0 per cent target imposed by the Stability Pact. The arithmetic of this example then implies that this country can maintain a budget deficit of 2 per cent per year on average, (assuming that the nominal growth of GDP is 4 per cent per year), without endangering the 50 per cent debt target.
In such a pact the 3 per cent maximum deficit rule cannot apply. It is far too inflexible. With each recession, countries would hit the ceiling and a crisis would arise. In general, numerical rules for the budget deficits should be avoided. They have no credibility in a world where democratically elected governments face the many claims and aspirations of their citizens.
In a new pact, there would be no place for heavy fines and penalties. Like the numerical rules, fines and penalties have no credibility. Instead, mutual control should be exerted by peer pressure. Some economists have proposed the creation of an official and independent watchdog that would evaluate the budget policies in the light of the announced debt targets. This seems like a good idea.
This is the time to abandon the old pact and build a new one that reconciles the need for debt sustainability and the desire of modern nations to flexibly react to economic disturbances. We have an opportunity to create such a pact. We cannot afford to live with the old pact that, if resuscitated, will be a constant source of conflicts in the future.
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