Fiscal Policy of the EU: Implications for Romania

Author(s):  
Ionut Dumitru ◽  
Ionela Dumitru
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Vanda Almeida ◽  
Salvador Barrios ◽  
Michael Christl ◽  
Silvia De Poli ◽  
Alberto Tumino ◽  
...  

AbstractThis analysis makes use of economic forecasts for 2020 issued by the European Commission in Autumn 2019 and Spring 2020, and of a counterfactual under a no-policy change assumption, to analyse the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on EU households´ income. Additionally, our analysis assesses the cushioning effect of discretionary fiscal policy measures taken by the EU Member States. We find that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to affect significantly households’ disposable income in the EU, with lower income households being more severely hit. However, our results show that due to policy intervention, the impact of the crisis is expected to be similar to the one experienced during the 2008–2009 financial crisis. In detail, our results indicate that discretionary fiscal policy measures will play a significant cushioning role, reducing the size of the income loss (from −9.3% to −4.3% for the average equivalised disposable income), its regressivity and mitigating the poverty impact of the pandemic. We conclude that policy interventions are therefore instrumental in cushioning against the impact of the crisis on inequality and poverty.


2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paweł Borys ◽  
Piotr Ciżkowicz ◽  
Andrzej Rzońca

Author(s):  
Mircea Muntean ◽  
Doina Pacurari

Fiscal policy constitutes – within the state's economic policy – a system by means of which the taxes and duties owed to the country's consolidated budget are established and collected. Taking into account the role fiscal policy has been playing since Romania's admission in the European Union, one of the goals ceaselessly looked for is its adapting to the international community's acquis through the implementation of the European directives in our context. The EU directives make reference to direct taxes: dividend tax, interest income tax, assets transfer, shares exchange, income taxation for the non-residents, and so on, along with the indirect taxes: value-added tax, excise duties, etc. The paper approaches the main provisions within the contents of the European directives as well as the means of their implementation in the Romanian fiscal legislation regarding various types of taxes. The implementation of the European directives has been simultaneous with the establishing of measures concerning fiscal fraud prevention, frauds liable to have a negative impact on the state's consolidated budget.


2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Witold Wiliński

Abstract The aim of this article is an extensive presentation of the fiscal policy conducted by the EU states in the years 2008–2015. The analysis concerns the legal regulations introduced at the EU level by the European Parliament and the Council, as well as the fiscal policies of governments of particular states. The first part of the article analyzes basic macroeconomic data in EU states concerning the level of debt, the level of gross domestic product (GDP) redistribution, and the level of economic growth in the analyzed period. The second part discusses the legal acts adopted by the European Parliament and the Council (the so-called ‘sixpack’ and the European Fiscal Compact), aimed at improving macroeconomic balance and ensuring supervision over the proper functioning of national finances. The third part analyzes the discretionary fiscal policies pursued in EU states. The main conclusions of this article are as follows: (i) EU countries recorded higher national debt levels and debt growth rates between 2008 and 2015 than most non-EU Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries; (ii) despite legal measures taken by the European Council and the European Commission in the form of the sixpack and the European Fiscal Compact, and despite discretionary fiscal measures such as in the form of the European Economic Recovery Plan, five EU countries (Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) have experienced a steady increase in their national debt levels; and (iii) deep reforms in the composition and level of government expenditure are a prerequisite for reducing national debt levels and for achieving satisfactory economic growth in these countries.


2020 ◽  
pp. 16-26
Author(s):  
Cornel Ban

Fiscal policy is the sum of decisions on taxation and spending that one takes in an economy, particularly in times of crisis. As such, it is of existential importance in the life of a society. Known for its recent waves of spending cuts and tax increases (austerity) during recessions (Blyth, 2013), 2020 Europe has had a more expansionary fiscal policy than ever before. How do we make sense of this shift? To answer this question, let us draw on select insights from three political economy literatures on fiscal crisis management. The first is the literature on learning. For its proponents, changes in fiscal policy are powered by evidence-based, yet politically mediated cognitive updating in the corridors of power. Plainly put, policymakers are keen students of what changes in their environment. This literature has showed that a great deal of learning took place in the EU since 2010 in particular (Schmidt, 2020; Kahkhaji and Radaelli, 2017; Dunlop and Radaelli, 2019). Its main implication for fiscal policy under corona is that between 2010 and 2015 the EU leaders learned about the limits of austerity and the virtues of more spending and tax cuts in a recession. Consequently, one would expect that when a deep recession arrives again (and it did in the spring of 2020), they would not be tempted to do a rerun of the self-defeating policies of the 2010-2012 period. As Keynes put it, “when the facts change, I change my mind.”


Author(s):  
Servet Akyol

The objective of this paper is to study the economic and social results of the post-crisis fiscal policies concerning the Balkan States that are members of the EU. The global crisis, which broke out in the US in 2008, had a deep effect on both developed and developing countries. Until today different policies have been put on the agenda in order to eliminate or alleviate the impacts of the crisis. In this context, bailout and stimulus packages were firstly implemented. Stimulus packages were replaced by austerity policies because of the increasing public debt and budget deficit after 2010. Fiscal policy focused on reducing the debts instead of supporting the economic activities. This study is based on historical and descriptive method. It examines the development of post-crisis fiscal policies in the Balkan States that are members of the EU. In this study, public expenditure, public debt, public deficit and unemployment rate are used as the main indicators. The effects of fiscal policy will be compared between countries. This study also suggests that although the crisis resulted from financial sector, burden of crisis was transferred to public sector. Moreover, in many countries, because of its increasing deficit and debt burden, public sector became depended on financial sector that was rescued before. After the crisis, fiscal policies has led to significant economic and social costs in the Balkan States that are members of the EU.


2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
István P. P. Székely ◽  
Werner Röger ◽  
Jan in't Veld
Keyword(s):  

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