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The ‘Muting’ of the Stability and Growth Pact

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2021

Antonio ESTELLA
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Abstract

This article proposes the “muting” of the SGP, the framework of rules that the EU has implemented since the coming into being of the European Monetary Union in the fiscal domain. It is argued herein that the system is far from being credible, from the perspective of the law-as-credibility paradigm. Therefore, the legal condition of the SGP should be “muted”. Three proposals to legally mute the SGP are examined in this article. The Open Method of Coordination is used as a useful model that could be followed from now on in the EU fiscal field. The gains in terms of legal credibility would argue in favour of the muting of the SGP and its correlative conversion into an OMC-like system.

Keywords

Stability and Growth PactEU fiscal rulescredibilitylegitimacylaw as credibilityOpen Method of CoordinationnamingshamingfamingBlanchardrulesdiscretionfinancial markets
Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies , Volume 23 , December 2021 , pp. 73 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Centre for European Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge

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Footnotes

‘Because I am silent and I am holy …’ Address to the Gods of the Underworld The Book of the Dead (Budge, 1898: 199)

*

Jean Monnet Chair ‘ad personam’ of Law of European Economic Governance and Associate Professor of Administrative Law, University Carlos III of Madrid.

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