While these programmes generally indicate that governments plan to proceed towards sound budgetary positions, there are also indications that budget targets do not consistently imply sufficient consolidation and that concrete and credible measures have not yet been specified in all programmes. These indications are a cause of concern and entail risks for the future.
The basic problems at this early stage of EMU were structural aspects that are still of relevance today and, as I will show later, will remain so for the future. The first aspect concerns the relationship between political and monetary unification, or at least the coordination of both aspects.