Lawmakers in Europe are pushing for more rigorous rules for enforcing rules governing economic policies and budgets in the region designed to help avoid future sovereign debt crises, according to Financial Times. On Tuesday, members of Parliament in the European Union approved a draft set of economic governance rules that would be stricter that a draft past previously. Specifically, the draft legislation would make it more difficult for countries to avoid sanction procedures, greater pressure for structural reforms, and larger fines for not following the economic rules.
The updated set of budget rules comes as a set of six pieces of legislation that would need approval before coming into effect, and early votes on detailed measures already revealed differences between lawmakers. The draft includes one provision includes potential fines for disobeying rules that could equal as much as 0.2% of a country’s gross domestic product. However, debate has already opened over how “automatic” the sanctions would be, as the European Central Bank has already criticized excessive flexibility in the handling sanctions under existing guidelines.
