The statistical backbone of the new European economic governance: the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure Scoreboard

Abstract

The Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure Scoreboard monitors economic developments in member states in order to anticipate and avoid future crises. The Scoreboard focus on “competitiveness”, paying much attention to the external position of economies and wage developments occurring in member states. In so doing, it encourages policies such as the decentralisation of wage bargaining that increase inequalities while having no clear effect on job creation. And when the Scoreboard addresses unemployment, it is in order to denounce the “rigidities” of the “labour market”. Finally, the Scoreboard ignores the roots of the current economic stagnation in Europe, namely excess profits and high inequalities, which are the true disequilibria from which Europe suffers and which impedes economic recovery, while the increase in the share of profits of the past decades has not led to the expected rise in private investment and private employment.