№302. The Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure and Germany: When is a surplus an “imbalance”?
№302. The Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure and Germany: When is a surplus an “imbalance”?
Keywords: Mcroeconomic imbalance procedure; Germany; Alert Mechanism Report; account balance;
The Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) was largely designed to prevent another boom/bust cycle as occurred in Spain and Ireland. But now, with the release by the European Commission on November 13th of its latest Alert Mechanism Report (AMR), which was introduced with the European Semester, this procedure is being used to address a surplus (that of Germany), which is widely perceived as constituting aproblem for the euro area’s recovery.
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