An open exchange of views and information between individual policy actors - without any commitment or mandate to take and implement joint decisions - will strengthen economic governance if it manages to improve the common understanding of the objectives and responsibilities of the respective policy areas and does not dilute accountability. The central legal basis for economic policy co-ordination among Member States within monetary Union is specified in Article 99 (ex 103) of the Maastricht Treaty, which states that “Member States shall regard their economic policies as a matter of common concern and shall co-ordinate them within the Council.” On the basis of this principle, the framework for the definition of economic policy priorities is provided by the “Broad Economic Policy Guidelines” adopted by the Council each year. These channels for policy co-ordination among Member States do not involve the independent monetary policy of the ECB. Any form of exchange of views and information, however, should clearly be distinguished from an attempt to co-ordinate macro-economic policies ex ante, which would give rise to serious information, incentive and enforcement problems. Ex ante co-ordination among different policy actors would blur the fundamental responsibilities of the respective policy areas under the Treaty. This, in turn would reduce accountability of individual policy actors and ultimately increase uncertainty about the policy framework. Given the Eurosystem’s monetary policy strategy, there should be no ambiguity how the single monetary policy will respond to developments in fiscal policies and wage settlements to the extent that they will affect the maintenance of price stability.
In particular, along with the adverse impact that the social distancing measures we may have to maintain in the future may exert on activity, there is a further effect. This is more difficult to measure a priori and relates to the possible and potentially persistent changes in agents’ behaviour in response to the “new normal”. These changes might include modified patterns of consumption and saving, or changes in supply chains or in certain aspects of firms’ operations. All these considerations would warrant qualifying the current recovery as uncertain, to take the second of the adjectives I used earlier to characterise this recovery. Additionally, from the standpoint of the sectors of activity, not all of them suffered on a comparable scale the consequences of the pandemic lockdown measures, as they are not equally susceptible to the imposition of social distancing measures. And the gradual startup in activity is not taking place at the same pace in the different sectors. The earlier normalisation of manufacturing and of certain services coexists alongside a slower than usual recovery in levels of activity in those other services, such as leisure and hospitality, where personal interaction is greater. Here, full normalisation is not likely to be attained until we have an effective medical solution. These differences in the pace at which normal levels of activity in productive sectors are being restored allows us to characterise this recovery as uneven, taking the last of my three adjectives.