Budgetary Dilemmas in Eastern EU Member States
Budgetary Dilemmas in Eastern EU Member States

Summary/Abstract: This paper wishes to identify optimal ways for fiscal consolidation in eastern EU member states. Dedicated efforts to have balanced budgets seem to be the rule rather than the exception across the enlarged European Union. Fiscal stability, more than any other factors, provide favourable macro-environments to increase the competitiveness of the member states and of the single market. These efforts, of course, are being constantly pressed - true, with varying degree - by the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) that obliges member states to have stable macro-economic environments with deficit caps, or preferably, with balanced budgets. It is argued that optimal ways for budget consolidation must be centred around deep structural reforms of national budgets that are prerequisites for efficient public finance mechanisms.

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