Benoît Cœuré: A budgetary capacity for the euro area Introductory remarks by Mr Benoît Cœuré, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at a public hearing at the European Parliament, Brussels, 2 March 2016. *  *  *  Madam Chair, Mr Chair, Honourable Members of the European Parliament, Ladies and gentlemen, I am grateful to the two rapporteurs and to the two committee chairs for holding this hearing today to advance the public debate on a fiscal capacity for the euro area. We are all well aware that political attention is largely focused elsewhere, but we should not lose sight of the objective of completing Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), securing its capacity to absorb economic shocks and creating confidence today in its future economic performance. As I have said elsewhere, if downside risks to the recovery were to materialise, this would not make it easier to respond to the refugee crisis or to counter terrorism. 1 A quick glance at fiscal policies today should further convince us of the importance of this discussion: •  The recovery in the euro area is proceeding at a sedate pace; it is mainly supported by our monetary policy measures and by the low price of energy. At the same time, the global economy is overshadowed by renewed uncertainty and broader geopolitical risks. •  Public finances in many euro area countries are still in a fragile condition.
A fiscal capacity for the euro area There are many ways a euro area fiscal capacity could be implemented, ranging from simple macro insurance or an unemployment benefit scheme to a fully-fledged euro area budget that could include the provision of public goods. Each of these options entails its own technical and political challenges and opportunities. In the end, the choice as to which option or combination 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  of options should be adopted will need to be a political one. This is in fact an opportunity to have a debate about Europe’s collective goals; such a debate is more necessary than ever and goes beyond the economic sphere alone. 3 From the perspective of the economist and of the central banker who has a keen interest in making EMU as a whole work better, the crucial question behind the discussion about a fiscal capacity for the euro area is how to maximise its positive effects on the functioning of EMU, while at the same time preserving incentives for sound fiscal policy-making and addressing structural weaknesses at the national level. To start with, we should all be able to agree that the objective of the fiscal capacity should be to make EMU more resilient by increasing the capacity for automatic stabilisation in the euro area. The aim should not be to actively fine-tune national economic cycles or to equalise revenues.