Reuploading Fiscal Policy Coordination in EMU

Until now, it has been taken for granted that once common objectives and coordination models in fiscal policy have been enacted in the EU (uploading), the common fiscal policy objectives are implemented equally across Member States (downloading). German Finance Minister Hans Eichel still argued in December 2001 that “wir werden den Stabilitätspakt auf Punkt und Komma einhalten. Da müsste schon der Himmel einstürzen. Aber dann stürzt er nicht nur über Deutschland ein, sondern auch über Europa and der Welt”.1 However, the unforeseen and serious problems that Germany faced in the implementation phase of the Stability Pact after 2002 resulted in a political situation in which, instead of fully ensuring their execution, Germany tried to reform the common fiscal policy objectives once formulated by Germany itself. Through the process of reuploading the German government actively lobbied in the Ecofin Council to reform the political interpretation of the rules of the Stability Pact, as will be argued in this chapter. Thus, reuploading, as defined in this research, refers to a process by which a Member State uses the common EU institutions and political procedures to reshape the collectively agreed policy responsibilities which were set in t1 to better suit the national interest of that specific Member State after the failed implementation phase in t3 (Figures 1.1 and 1.2).