What France will (not) do on the new EU budget rules
What the French Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, said and made clear during the online conference on the future of Europe.
“No hurry on the front of the reform of the budget rules”. So today the Financial Times opens its daily newsletter, reporting the statements made yesterday by the French Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, during the online conference on the future of Europe.
"We must be clear", said the French minister, "there will not be an agreement (on the reform of the rules nda ) during our term of office and this is not even our intention".
On the FT they express surprise at this stance. The next semester would indeed be suitable because Germany should have a government in office after the elections , Draghi (a strong supporter of the reform of the rules) should be in the saddle of Rome and Macron could exploit a success on this front as a good viaticum for the elections of April.
The paradoxical, not to say tragicomic, aspect is that Le Maire recognizes that the old rules – 1997 Stability Pact, as reformed between 2011 and 2013 with the six-pack and two-pack regulations, in addition to the Treaty on the Fiscal Compact of 2012 – are now obsolete and inapplicable, unless they cause new disasters such as those in the years following their application.
But in Paris they are convinced that it will take time to reach a broad consensus on the reform that can only come after a "quiet collegial discussion". If time is not a problem for Le Maire – so the Financial Times speculates – then it is probably counting on the fact that during 2022 Brussels will leave ample room for maneuver to the Member States in drafting the budget for 2023, only formally subject to the rules that have been fully restored. in force and no longer suspended due to the operation of the safeguard clause.
France has other priorities for its six-month presidency: a global agreement for a corporate tax, the mechanism for a tax on CO2 emissions related to imported goods and the defense of EU banks from new and excessive capital requirements.
In the meantime, we will remain in the trenches and will have to rely on the Commission's 'flexibility' in applying outdated and harmful rules.
“Nothing new on the western front”, one would say by appropriately quoting the famous novel, of which here we find the illusion of making it. Let's just hope the ending is different than that of the German soldier in the book.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/cosa-non-fara-la-francia-sulle-nuove-regole-ue-di-bilancio/ on Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:46:16 +0000.