Our first experiences with these EU-level economic policy instruments show that the consolidation of public finances has indeed become a priority for all Member States, and that efforts, although as yet not always sufficiently ambitious, have been undertaken to achieve balanced budgets in the medium term.
Another equally important problem is that the frequent changes in the regulatory environment and the windfall taxes have rendered all commercial calculations concerning the future uncertain, leading to a predictability chaos. It is hardly surprising that the fiscal easing financed from the nationalisation of pension funds did not yield the results hoped for.