Brussels, 18/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - Behind closed doors on Tuesday 17 May 2011, EU27 finance ministers examined progress in the inter-institutional talks on six items of draft legislation to boost economic governance in Europe, although the disagreements did not emerge during the public debate. Most Member States were hostile about the idea of expanding reverse qualified majority decision-making any further than set out in the general approach the ministers agreed upon in March 2011 (see EUROPE 10337). The Hungarian Presidency was given a negotiating mandate for the five other pieces of legislation The ECOFIN Council chair, György Matolcsy, said action had to be taken immediately in order to abide by the 30 June 2011 deadline.
The Member States want vote by reverse qualified majority to apply solely to legislation introducing fines for infringement of the rules. This would mean that a decision would be deemed passed unless a qualified majority of states opposes it. The European Parliament, however, wants reverse qualified majority voting to apply in other cases also, suggesting a total of fifteen, including the preventive and corrective arms of the Stability and Growth Pact. The Hungarian Presidency said that legal analysis had shown in some cases that introducing a reverse qualified majority vote would clash with the decision-making procedure laid down in the EU treaties. A diplomat commented that it was a genuine stumbling block. On Tuesday, the Member States refused to give way on this point (apart from the Benelux countries), but they do not seem to oppose the Hungarian idea of examining the introduction of reverse majority voting for some stages of the proceedings against a country for excessive macroeconomic imbalances.
The draft legislation includes the creation of indicators to assess Member States' macroeconomic situations. The EP wants to be involved in the chose of indicators in question. The Member States say that such a 'roadmap' of indicators would be no more than an analytical tool and therefore want a less cumbersome method that can be easily updated as necessary from time to time.
Penalties. The EP has increased the scale of the fines that could be levied on offending countries (experiencing excessive macroeconomic imbalance). It has introduced a new financial penalty for breaking the EU's statistical rules. The Hungarian Presidency is pleased that the Council of Ministers is displaying some flexibility about the amount of the fines and their cumulative effect. Germany opposes this because it is demanding less stringent treatment of its own current account surpluses A diplomat commented about the EP's idea of fining countries for not applying by the EU's way of calculating statistics that the idea had the chance of making headway. The EP's idea is that the European Commission would be asked to publish separate legislation to intorsion's such statistical penalties The Member States are sticking to their guns of wanting to use any cash raised from fines to boost the temporary EFSF bailout fund until the European Stability Mechanism is set up in July 2013.
A large majority of Member States reject the European Parliament's idea of asking the Commission to study the feasibility of a eurobond market, with Germany commenting that it would send the wrong signal. Ireland and Italy back the idea of a feasibility study, Ireland commenting that in the United States, there isn't any problem with federal bonds and there wouldn't be any problem in Europe either.
The EP backs the idea of regular economic dialogue along the lines of the existing monetary dialogue, whereby countries in economic difficulty (budget or the wider economy) could brief MEPs about the situation. France rejects this idea, arguing that economic policy is a national matter. The idea of giving the European Commission special powers in the event of an emergency is strongly challenged. (M.B./transl.fl)