the noncompliance with budgetary discipline

Despite the current turbulence, the supporters of the euro cling to their beliefs. For them, the European monetary construction was just incomplete and the crisis will provide the dimension was missing: the coordination of national economic policies.

Unfortunately, demonstrates that, in this area, there is now a deep misunderstanding between the two countries. For the Germans, the question boils down to respect budgetary discipline: the economic policies of the Member countries of the euro, as of the Economic Union, are reconciled once they manage to balance their public accounts in the medium-long term.

The France considers, on the contrary, that the scope of coordination must be wider. Particular, she wished to include a harmonisation of the competitiveness of economies partners, the Spanish example underlining the importance of this aspect of the question. In this case, the worrying evolution of public debt is the result of the difficulty to find a balanced growth consistent with resorption of public deficits. In this case, to focus on compliance with budgetary discipline is simply to take the problem backwards.

This opposition is explained by the differences in the way work the European economies: those of their funding and systems of governance, those of the formation of prices and wages, those of their sensitivity to shock real and saga In short, it is the institutional heterogeneity of the countries of the zone. A business model "to the German" based on a certain sharing of decision-making between capital and labour power makes possible tradeoffs between the evolution of wages and employment. It is shown that such a model requires monetary and fiscal policies sufficiently rigorous for wage negotiations. Thus, the Germany was able to conduct a policy of competitive disinflation that has provided a significant competitive advantage. This policy allowed him to boost growth through exports, rather than by the fiscal stimulus.

On the contrary, the closest economies of the funding and governance model anglo-saxon (we should put the France) have responded to competitive pressures and the requirements of the "forward capital" by seeking public spending and private debt. Because in the absence of negotiated and centralized labour market adjustment, these pressures have resulted in losses of jobs and activities which had to be offset by public deficits artificially and more lax credit conditions. A more reasonable parity of the euro and the choice of a higher inflation rate would have probably reduced the dilemmas of economic policy in some countries, including the France. This would have facilitated the adjustment of relative prices, including wages and the real exchange rate. But the rigidity of European monetary policy has inevitably led these countries to the fault, i.e. the non-compliance with budgetary discipline.

Therefore, it is illusory to find the person or persons responsible for these imbalances. Of course can accuse the Germany to a non-cooperative strategy, since surpluses need to dig the external deficits of its partners and depress their aggregate demand. Budget deficits as a result, and on which the Germany concentrates his criticism, are partly the result of his behaviour. But, in return, one must ask if it is not legitimate for a country developed and aging of balance of trade surpluses. If this is the case, the condemnation of the German strategy must at least be nuanced, as she returned to denounce the use of comparative advantage (the co-management system) on the grounds that other countries have not. And the request for cooperation appears as a way to claim a moderation of this advantage. We understand that it will be difficult to obtain.

This is why calls for the coordination of economic policies might long remain dead letter. They can find outside of a convergence effect institutions, and economic and social models. Which is unfortunately not scheduled for tomorrow.