The national convergence or stability programmes each member state presents to show how it intends to follow the guidelines supplement the latter, which can be likened to a common budget statement for the euro area. It is envisaged that the countries will exert peer pressure to bring about a good economic development in  3  BIS Review 76/1999  each country and thereby fulfil the common objectives of sustainable growth with high employment and stable prices. A central issue here is the formation of fiscal policy, for which there are binding rules. In the Maastricht Treaty the EU countries agreed that budget deficits and government debt relative to GDP are to be limited to 3 and 60 per cent, respectively. In summer 1997 the EU finance ministers agreed to clarify and tighten the existing fiscal policy goals so as to guarantee a sound development of government finances in the Union. The background to this was that the rules of the game once the monetary union had been established were less clear than the criteria for participation in the euro area. More specifically, there were worries that once they had joined the euro area, countries with a high debt ratio would implement a less vigorous policy because their incentives for exercising restraint would not be as clear. The pressure on these countries to consolidate their budgets might also ease if their interest rates fell on account of ‘borrowed’ credibility from the German economy. The Stability and Growth Pact was initiated by Germany.
This has been justified by saying that it might cause more confusion than clarity about the grounds for the policy. That has not been the Riksbank’s experience. Our view of inflationary pressure in the Swedish economy is published on a quarterly basis. The clear presentation gives observers a chance of understanding and questioning our assessments. As new information becomes available, moreover, they are in a position to relate it to our earlier assessment and continuously form a fairly good picture of how interest rates are likely to move in the future. BIS Review 76/1999  2  The publication of our inflation assessments has also facilitated decisions in recent years to raise or lower interest rates. In that the grounds for our actions are clearer, there is less risk of our being accused of heeding extraneous considerations, a worry that featured in the European discussion last autumn. It is my belief, however, that the ECB will become more open about its economic assessments as it settles more comfortably into its forecasting process and inflation assessment. Another difference in transparency concerns access to discussions at the decision-making meetings. The ECB has chosen not to publish any minutes. An important argument for this policy - and one that I find understandable but debatable – is that minutes disclosing how individual members voted might occasion a greater element of national considerations.