Shifting decision-making from the national to the European level would mitigate the deficit bias of the individual member states that is inherent in the current set-up of EMU. While this in itself is not a guarantee of sound fiscal policy choices, such a framework would at least be consistent with the concept of mutual liability. What kind of sovereignty shift are we talking about?
Last year, the French finance minister Michel Sapin declared that, “the Commission […] has absolutely no power to reject or knock down or censure a budget […]. Here as elsewhere, sovereignty belongs to the French parliament.” In a genuine fiscal union, that would change. A member state would have to follow through on the demands of a European fiscal authority.