Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council – Interim progress report on the implementation of Council Directive 2011/85/EU on requirements for budgetary frameworks of the Member States

Council Directive 2011/85/EU on requirements for budgetary frameworks of the Member States1 entered into force in December 2011. It is an important component of the legislative package on the strengthening of economic governance (also known as the ‘six-pack’). This Directive provided the first opportunity for the European Union to set minimum requirements for budgetary frameworks, providing legal certainty on top of the country-specific recommendations issued under the European semester process.

With pressing consolidation demands in a large number of Member States, emphasis on delivery has now become paramount. Against this background, efforts to enhance national budgetary frameworks are strongly intertwined with fiscal consolidation policies since both aim to bring about lasting improvements in the quality of fiscal outcomes.

Under Article 15(3) of the Directive, the Commission is asked ‘to prepare an interim progress report on the implementation of the main provisions of this Directive on the basis of relevant information from Member States, which shall be submitted to the European Parliament and the Council by 14 December 2012’. To that end, the Commission submitted to the Economic Policy Committee in May 2012 a questionnaire giving Member States the opportunity to report on measures in place, reforms already launched or concrete plans.

Accordingly, this report is primarily based on the information reported by the Member States. Most Member States delivered their contributions in September 2012. Therefore the information reflects the state-of-play at the time of reporting. Detailed country fiches are presented in the accompanying Commission staff working document.

EUR-Lex: COM(2012)761: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2012:761:FIN

European Commission: SWD(2012)433: Commission staff working document http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=SWD:2012:0433:FIN:EN:PDF

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