In the past, the Union’s cohesion has been severely tested by repeated violations of budgetary rules – not only in relation to the most recent events, but also for those that led to the first reform of the Stability and Growth Pact in 2005 – and by the difficulty of making any in-depth assessment of national financial systems, which are subject to profoundly different regulations and supervisory practices.
The strengthening of the budgetary rules, above all as regards prevention, and the extension of multilateral supervision to macroeconomic imbalances have accompanied the establishment of mechanisms for managing sovereign debt crises and paved the way for the launch of the banking union, renewing discussion on the budgetary union and plans for a political one.