2008 Fiscal Notifications of candidate countries: overview and assessment

In this Occasional Paper the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs publishes its overview and assessments of the 2008 Pre-accession fiscal notifications of the candidate countries (Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey).

One of the economic priorities of the 1999 and 2000 Accession Partnerships was the establishment of an annual fiscal surveillance for the candidate countries. This gave birth to the so-called Pre-Accession Fiscal Surveillance Procedure, which aims at preparing countries for the participation in the multilateral surveillance and economic policy co-ordination procedures currently in place in the EU as part of the Economic and Monetary Union.

The annual Pre-Accession Fiscal Notifications are part of
this procedure. Candidate countries are under this procedure invited to provide regular budgetary data in methodological compliance with the EU Accounting Standards (ESA 95). Their purpose is to ensure that government data of candidate countries are of a sufficient standard during the preaccession period to allow fiscal policy and analysis and to ensure that their reporting of fiscal positions becomes increasingly comparable to Member States. Thereby, the pre-accession fiscal notifications serve as preparation for the surveillance procedures in the Economic and Monetary
Union of the EU.