Publication

The paper discusses the implications of the institutional crisis in the EU in early 2004 and the necessity to accept the the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) as a compromise in macroeconomic policymaking. It situates the debate concerning the application of SGP in a broader evolution of the struggle between two schools of thought concerning macroeconomic policymaking in the European Union: the school calling for a strengthening of competences at the EU level and the school arguing for preserving national competences for budgetary policy even in the face of the transfer of competence for monetary policy to the European Central Bank (ECB).