Alberto Majocchi

New Own Resources for a Eurozone Budget

The goal of this workshop is to focus on the weak compliance of Member States with the rules and the lack of effective mechanism for their enforcement. It follows that the main interest will be absorbed by a discussion of how the economic governance could work more effectively. This idea implies that the current system, largely based on automatic rules fixed at the European level and applied uniformly in all the countries showing high deficit or a big amount of debt, is considered as adequate and effective and only needy of some reforms. I will try to support the opposite idea that the eurozone cannot limit itself to redressing financial stability through austerity measures, disregarding discretional political choices that take into account different social and economic conditions, and that it must promote an increase in the size of the budget funded with real own resources to finance the production of European public goods in primis, control of external borders, migrants integration and security – and to guarantee the issuing of eurobonds, supplementing the provisions of the Juncker Plan in building material and immaterial infrastructures, in supporting small and medium size enterprises and in promoting research and higher education. Hence, the system should be changed radically if the Economic and Monetary Union should work efficiently and I will put main emphasis on the need to advance rapidly on the path towards a true Fiscal Union, leading, at the end of the process, to a Political Union with a federal structure.