The behaviour of the borrowing requirement in the first part of the year is fundamentally consistent with the new estimates of net borrowing for 2007. In the first five months of the year the general government borrowing requirement amounted to € billion, about € billion less than in the same period of 2006.
In a monetary union, no policy area can be seen in isolation. Each interacts with and affects the others. After years of reform efforts, there is an increasing risk that fatigue is setting in: both “reform fatigue” and “integration fatigue” may increasingly reduce the willingness to fix the flaws in the design of EMU.