CASE contributes to the report on fiscal rules in the EU

One of the most striking economic governance trends of recent years has been the increased resort to fiscal rules. In the EU as a whole, the number of fiscal rules recorded by the European Commission in its fiscal rules database has risen nearly tenfold since the early 1990s. Such rules have varied considerably across countries. Nearly all EU Member States have also now established Fiscal Councils as independent agencies to monitor the conduct of fiscal policy. Starting with the Stability and Growth Pact, the EU has been a prime mover in stimulating rule-based governance. Many of the reforms enacted in response to the years of crisis since 2008 were intended to tie the hands of governments even more by establishing norms not only for fiscal discipline, but also for curbing other macroeconomic imbalances. The changes also provide for more intensive monitoring of national policy-making by the EU level and undeniably constitute a far-reaching package.

Fiscal rules and other rule-based mechanisms in practice: introduction to case studies of four Member States consists of the national case studies providing a detailed examination of fiscal and other rules in four EU Member States: Italy, Poland, Slovakia and the UK.

CASE experts Grzegorz Poniatowski and Krzysztof Głowacki analyzed the fiscal rules that Poland has used to keep its fiscal policy disciplined and coordinated within the EU. This Report is divided into six sections. The first two sections set the stage for the analysis by listing the national fiscal rules in Poland, recounting their evolution and presenting their institutional setup. The next two sections provide an account of the compliance and commitment to the national and EU fiscal rules from the side of the Polish policy makers. The fifth section is an assessment of the effectiveness of the fiscal rules, and the sixth section concludes the paper.

Read the report

The publication within the EU funded project FIRSTRUN – Fiscal Rules and Strategies under Externalities and Uncertainties