ESC EXPRESSES A POSITION ON THE EU ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE REVIEW

On 15th June 2020, the ESC held a Plenary Session and adopted a resolution on the "Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Central Bank, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions - Economic Governance Review". With this act the ESC joined the public debate procedure, which the European Commission launched and should end on 30th June. The adopted resolution was sent to all European and national stakeholders.

In the resolution, the ESC states that the Economic Governance Review is based on an analysis of what has been achieved so far in the field of economic governance based on the positions and recommendations of the European institutions and various stakeholders and institutions, including the academia.

The ESC considers that achieving the maximum degree of coordination between national fiscal policies, on the one hand, and combining them with the monetary policy of the European Central Bank, on the other hand, should be done by ensuring long-term stability of public finances and at the same time by giving the opportunity to Member States to manage the economic and social processes, including through the implementation of counter-cyclical and anti-crisis policies.
According to the ESC, the economic governance framework should not lead to divisions between Member States which have adopted the common currency and the others. Therefore, the ESC considers that every EU Member State outside the euro area should be able to voluntarily join all the mechanisms open to euro area countries. At the same time, the economic governance actions must not go beyond the provisions of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
The ESC considers that economic governance should focus its efforts on the biggest challenge within the macroeconomic goals - maintaining the debt of Member States at manageable levels. In this regard, the ESC proposes a periodical review of the indicators to be made, which are monitored in the macroeconomic imbalances procedure. They must be relatively constant in composition and must reflect the economic and social processes in a balanced way. Current priorities should be taken into account with current indicators that do not conflict and do not overcomplicate the basic and constant system of indicators.

The ESC emphasizes its position, which has repeatedly expressed, that the EU economic governance should not focus only on fiscal indicators. Therefore, the ESC supports the inclusion of social indicators related to the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights, which balances monitoring. At the same time, the ESC believes that given the new EU priorities related to the Green Deal, environmental indicators should be included in the monitoring system as well.
The document also emphasizes the role of social partners and organised civil society not only in the process of discussing the framework of EU economic governance and its objectives, but also in implementing specific policies, such as participation in vocational training, performance monitoring, reduction of bureaucracy and increasing transparency.

In its act, the ESC calls for industrialization policy, strengthening the supply chains, development of small and medium enterprises to be part of the objectives of the economic governance.

The ESC calls for the EU economic governance to be focused on topics of interest to all Member States, such as the Green Deal, migration management, general defense, etc., and in which the EU creates added value without replacing the principles of subsidiarity and the sovereign powers of Member States.