Whereas European institutions, including the ECB, advocate strict and tight timeframes, IMF and U.S. economists tend to prefer a more flexible approach. This discussion is not new and will remain a central issue of the political and economic debate in the near future – and it is a discussion where easy answers indeed tend to be misleading.
The difficult political process of regaining fiscal sustainability must of course be strengthened and controlled without damaging the still very fragile process of economic recovery. It is true that future economic growth will depend on a number of supply-side structural reforms of the labor and products markets.