fiscal policies and the macro-economic policy mix in the EMU, the need to moderate unit labour costs developments in some countries (through an increased dialogue with the social partners) in order to giver lesser reasons to the ECB to take a rigid stance, the need to improve the functioning of capital, labour and goods/services markets in the EMU and finally the question, how in a mid-term perspective the EMU could be given a democratically legitimate fiscal regime including mechanism to ensure cyclical stabilisation across national and regional borders
rephrased:
should be about coordination of tax policies, something the neolibs violently fight ("tax competition is good) so I epxect this about lowering taxes everywhere
the more traditional drivel about "reform", i.e. pay workers less, because wage inflation is the only evil kind of inflation
blablabla deregulate markets
yes, the real elephant in the room, which was supposed to happen, but of course is not (cf the above 3 points) and whose absence leads to complaints about the ECB;
A new call for a common set of fiscal policies should be warranted...but
Should corporate taxes be the sma ein all countires, or do we need differences so that poorer countires cna get a better chance to grow?
And what about income taxes....
and what about capital gain taxes...
Should there be a set of top and bottom european rules?
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
I agree that political union is the real elephant. but as it is a huge project and will take time to achive, I would precisely not play down the importance of functioning markets.
You are right that much of what you currently hear about it is blabla.
What about this idea to see things: Right now, functioning European markets are equated with neo-liberalism and automatically we think about de-regulation, liberalisations etc. when we here this. But markets in the EU could of course at the same time function across borders, and be regulated (to a certain degree ;) on a European scale. For EMU, the importance is that they work across borders. But given the current political climate, this will surely not be achieved by a pure neo-lib deregulation policy. The opposite is the case, just look into the growing tendencies of national protectionisms.
By the way, an interesting and debatable piece of thought on the organisation of postal services in the EU is here http://www.newropeans-magazine.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5005&Itemid =110
This has of course nothing to do with EMU in a strict sense, but it shows much of the sensitivities related to the deregulation agenda put in place some time ago.
Looking forward to reading you, Daniela
The message is "regulation is bad", not "national regulation is ineffective today, let's replace it by European regulations. Actually, the discourse is right, but the practice is the exact opposite.
And thus the coordination of economic and fiscal policies at the European level do not happen, because that would go against the deregulation train, or the "sovereignty" of various countries, etc... In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
I take the diarist, when she says "social partners," to mean she recognizes that this will need to be consensual between both labor and capital, and that labor will be properly represented, as it most of the time is in Germany, which would be a big improvement over the sorts of neo-liberal directives we all know and love. This consensus model would be perfect if those many, who are excluded from the labor market, also had a voice.
We get our instinctive negativity to reform I think from reading too much neo-liberal drivel coming out of England, where the model is hardly consensual. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
