Torn in two directions in its dual role as a political institution and guardian of the treaties, the Commission is frequently inclined to compromise at the expense of budgetary discipline. In the area of fiscal surveillance, the Commission is echoing Marx. Not Karl Marx, but US comedian Groucho Marx, who is supposed to have said of himself that “These are my principles.
In that sense, the spotlight accorded to specific levels of inflation has been a quid pro quo for entrusting an important slice of economic policy to a technocratic institution. In contrast to this, macroprudential considerations are much more nebulous – containing more elements of art rather than science – and will inevitably test the limits of democratic deference to the conduct of monetary policy.