The European Commission, albeit foreseen as the guardian of the Stability and Growth Pact, has already exploited scope on several occasions and invariably interpreted the rules very generously in doing so. Some euro-area countries have been breaching the rules for nine years now. What is needed to strengthen the fiscal rules is a simple and transparent design and implementation of the rules.
The recent global financial crisis is but the latest of these exogenous factors that has had a profound impact on regional economies which are yet to recover sufficiently to achieve pre-crisis growth levels.