Be the first to comment!Scicluna urges EU to improve Eurozone governance
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Prof Edward Scicluna MEP has called on the European Commission to take urgent steps to improve statistical governance in the Eurozone, warning that otherwise the Eurozone would face credibility problems.
In the aftermath of the crisis in Greece, where the budget deficit was, at nearly 13%, twice as large as had the statistics had claimed, Prof Scicluna called on the Commission, in a parliamentary question, to make proposals to improve the statistical governance of member states especially if they are in the Eurozone.
These would include common EU-wide auditing standards on public finances and government economic forecasts. He also called for the EU to regularly publish the results of economic ‘stress tests’ in all countries across the Eurozone.
Prof Scicluna said, “The credibility of the Eurozone economy is undermined when many countries lack either truly independent statistical institutions or good statistical governance. We are all aware that economic statistics were falsified in Greece, but I am sure there are others that have not been discovered.”
“As I said in the European Parliament last week, a glaring weakness in the Eurozone is that there is no strong centralised body to monitor economic statistics. We may have Eurostat, but what we really need is to give the Commission the powers to audit public finances according to common EU standards, and provide oversight over government economic forecasts. This should be done at EU level.”
Prof Scicluna concluded, “As a citizen of a Eurozone member I am very annoyed that my country is allowed to continue with an archaic cash-flow system to measure its public finances, while our economic forecasts are always allowed to be overly optimistic in the face of a different reality.”
“If the Eurozone is to win back its reputation, then financial markets have to be able to trust the integrity of its economic statistics and forecasts. Greece’s predicament must be a lesson to us all – act now to get our house in order, or face bleak consequences.”
