The Effects of Crises and European Fiscal Governance Reforms on the Budgetary Processes of Member States

Abstract:

The goal of this article was to explore how the experience of the crisis and the fiscal governance reforms at the European level have influenced budget processes in member states. Drawing on the Europeanization, fiscal governance and pubic crisis management literature, the article first outlines a series of propositions about the kinds of shifts in the budget process that we would expect to ensue from the crisis experience and European reforms.

The empirical part of our article explores the validity of those theoretical conjectures in three different member states: Portugal, Austria and Finland. We found that the crisis experience and European reforms have led to increased centralization of the budgetary process in all three countries. Although we would have expected Austria and Portugal to move closer towards the contracts approach of fiscal governance, this has not happened as the medium‐term expenditure frameworks are not viewed as binding.