Similarly, the Commission’s position was assessed to be too weak vis-à-vis the Council to
effectively live up to its role of Guardian of the Treaty.
Against this backdrop, a number of reform proposals concluded that enforcement should be
improved by strengthening the institutions and procedures at both the European and the
national level. This view is only marginally reflected in the reformed SGP, however. It is true
that, unlike the old Pact, it gives the Commission the possibility to directly issue policy advice
to Member States via its preventive arm without the approval of the Council. However, no
changes were made to the governance of its corrective arm. Moreover, fiscal governance at
national level is addressed only very cursorily, by stating that national institutions could play
a more prominent role in budgetary surveillance.
Taken as a whole, the reform of the SGP builds upon the presumption that enforceability can
be mainly achieved by enhancing the economic rationale of the common fiscal rules and
hence their ownership by national policy-makers. In particular, more prominence is now
given to the economic situation of the Member States as well as to other country-specific
elements when assessing fiscal performance at all levels of the EU’s budgetary surveillance.
Moreover, some of the parameters of the fiscal rules are modified to bring them closer to
‘economic reality’. The second route towards improved enforceability, namely by
strengthening the procedures and institutions of the EU fiscal surveillance system, is given
less importance.
In terms of the four broad groups of economists identified in the previous section, the changes
incorporated in the new SGP in March 2005 appear to be most in line with the views of the
advocates of economic growth and to some extent with the views of the disenchanted
reformers. Nevertheless, some of the innovations of the reformed SGP, specifically the
country-specific medium-term budgetary objectives that may differ from close to balance or
in surplus depending on debt and growth performance, reflect ideas put forward by the
supporters of long-term sustainability. Only the defenders of fiscal discipline seem to have
had little impact on the outcome of the actual reform process.
5. Why so many proposals?
About one hundred proposals to reform the SGP, as summarized in Annex 1, have been
presented in recent years by professional economists. This is just the tip of the iceberg as we
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