Regulation 2013/473 - Common provisions for monitoring and assessing draft budgetary plans and ensuring the correction of excessive deficit of the Member States in the euro area - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 140/11

The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) requires that Member States regard their economic policies as a matter of common concern, that their budgetary policies are guided by the need for sound public finances and that their economic policies do not risk jeopardising the proper functioning of economic and monetary union.

The Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) aims to secure budgetary discipline across the Union and sets out the framework for preventing and correcting excessive government deficits. It is based on the objective of sound government finances as a means of strengthening the conditions for price stability and for strong sustainable growth underpinned by financial stability, thereby supporting the achievement of the Union's objectives for sustainable growth and jobs. The SGP includes the multilateral surveillance system laid down in Council Regulation (EC) No 1466/97 of 7 July 1997 on the strengthening of the surveillance of budgetary positions and the surveillance and coordination of economic policies (3) and the procedure for the avoidance of excessive government deficit laid down in Article 126 TFEU and further specified in Council Regulation (EC) No 1467/97 of 7 July 1997 on speeding up and clarifying the implementation of the excessive deficit procedure (4). The SGP has been further strengthened by Regulation (EU) No 1175/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council (5) and Council Regulation (EU) No 1177/2011 (6). Regulation (EU) No 1173/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 November 2011 on the effective enforcement of budgetary surveillance in the euro area (7) added a system of effective, preventive and gradual enforcement mechanisms in the form of the imposition of sanctions on Member States whose currency is the euro.

The strengthening of the SGP has enhanced the guidance provided to Member States concerning prudent fiscal policy-making, and, for the Member States whose currency is the euro, has reinforced and made more automatic the imposition of sanctions for non-compliance with prudent fiscal policy-making, in order to avoid excessive government deficits. Those provisions have created a more comprehensive framework.

In order to ensure closer coordination of economic policies and sustained convergence of the economic performance of Member States, the European Semester, as established in Article 2-a of Regulation (EC) No 1466/97, provides a framework for economic policy coordination. The European Semester includes the formulation, and the surveillance of the implementation, of the broad guidelines of the economic policies of the Member States and of the Union (broad economic policy guidelines) in accordance with Article 121(2) TFEU; the formulation, and the examination of the implementation, of the employment guidelines that must be taken into account by Member States in accordance with Article 148(2) TFEU (employment guidelines); the submission and assessment of Member States' stability or convergence programmes under that Regulation;...