Cohesion Policy and Sound Economic Governance: A Loveless Marriage

• Authors: Vehelst Stijn
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The appellation “macroeconomic conditionality” itself did not make the final legal texts, as the rules now refer to “sound economic governance.” Nonetheless, the content of expanded macroeconomic conditionality remains. In contrast to previous rules, macroeconomic conditionality now applies to all cohesion policy funds and even to agriculture and fishery funds, i.e., all the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESI Funds). In addition, conditionality applies to all economic governance procedures. To appease the European Parliament, the Commission’s original proposal was nonetheless substantially amended. The result is a form of conditionality with a great deal of caps and safeguards. Due to the large opposition to macroeconomic conditionality, the relation between cohesion policy and sound economic governance got off to a rocky start. This article aims to evaluate these expanded macroeconomic conditionality rules. First, the article describes the functioning of macroeconomic conditionality, both its sanctioning part (the stick) and incentive part (the carrot). Subsequently, the potential impact of these new rules is assessed.

Keywords

EN

Eurozone; economic

• Publisher: Polski Instytut Spraw Międzynarodowych
• Journal: The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs
• Year: 2014
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 113-126

Contributors

author

Vehelst Stijn