Yes / Purpose – The objective of this study is to understand the budgetary role of national legislatures in Euro Area (EA) countries and to analyse implications for fiscal discipline. Design/methodology/approach – Building on the budget institutions literature, a legislative budgetary power index for all the 19 EA countries is constructed using OECD and European Commission data as well as data generated from questionnaires to national authorities. A two-way fixed effects panel data model is then used to assess the effect of legislative budgetary power on the budget balance in the EA during 2006-15. Findings - Overall, in the EA, formal legislative powers vis-à-vis the national budgetary process are weak but there is more legislative involvement in SGP procedures and legislative budgetary organisational capacity is generally quite good. In contrast to the traditional view in the budget institutions literature, our empirical findings show that strong legislative budgetary power does not necessarily result in larger budget deficits. Research limitations/implications – Data on legislative budgeting was available from different sources and timeseries data was very limited. Practical implications – There is scope to improve democratic legitimacy of the national budgetary process in the EA, without necessarily jeopardising fiscal discipline. Originality/value – The constructed legislative budgetary power index covers all the 19 EA countries and has a broad scope covering various novel institutional characteristics. The empirical analysis contributes to the scarce literature on the impact of legislative budgeting on fiscal discipline.

The work examines the hypothesis that the Italian debt has already reached its critical level and the creditors no longer trust the country. I concluded that it's far from having reached its critical level. Despite the rising debt and internal problems, Italy borrows more cheaply than before and thanks to economic growth and some reforms we can expect this trend to continue. On the other hand, the country still has major structural problems and struggles with high unemployment and declining competitiveness. In the case of failure to introduce necessary reforms, in a longer-term can Italy suffer by significant problems.

This study assesses the quality of national budget institutions and legislative budgetary power in the Euro Area (EA) and examines their implications on fiscal discipline. Following the sovereign debt crises, common EA requirements have been introduced for national budget institutions, most notably for fiscal rules and independent fiscal councils. Meanwhile, the legislature has a key role to ensure that budgetary decisions are democratically legitimate, but strong legislative budgetary power is generally associated with less fiscal restraint. Two comprehensive composite indices are produced, based on recent data which captures reforms implemented after the Crisis. The findings show that overall, budget institutions in the EA are of medium quality, whilst legislative budgetary power is weak. Notwithstanding the thrust for a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, the specific characteristics of budget institutions differ considerably among the EA countries. Furthermore, results from a two-way fixed effects panel model for 2006-2015 show a positive relationship between the quality of budget institutions and the budget balance, but, in contrast to previous studies, the effect is rather weak. Being supra-nationally mandated, recent reforms to budget institutions in EA member states may suffer from a lack of ownership, thus impinging on their effectiveness to instil fiscal discipline. A qualitative case study on Malta provides further insight into the limitations of centrally-mandated institutional reforms. Finally, the findings suggest that stronger legislative budgetary power does not necessarily jeopardise fiscal discipline, if this involves a broad role of the legislature in the budgetary process, beyond amendment powers.

In my thesis I have dealt with the issue of Fiscal Responsibility in the EU, especially the position the EU Member States have on this issue. The first part defines the Budget responsibility and Fiscal policy at the level of the Czech Republic and level of European Union. There has been mainly described and analyzed the Stability and Growth Pact, and the Fiscal compact. The second part has been devoted to evaluation of individual member states and described how the legislative acts are used for effort to reach sustainable finances contributing to the overall generally maintain Responsible and Fiscal policy. At the end its summarized and compared the evolution of public debt and budget deficits and also characterized their independent Financial institution.

Spain is one of the founding countries of the European Monetary Union, that adopted the single currency in 1999. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the overall impact of the Euro on the Spanish economy. The first part briefly introduces Spain's economy. The second part is about the European Central Bank's monetary policy. This part analyses the suitability of the single monetary policy and then examines its specific implications on the Spanish economy. The third part deals with the fiscal policy and the Stability and Growth Pact. This part analyses the impact of the Euro on the public finances.

《穩定暨成長協定》（Stability and Growth Pact, SGP）作為歐洲經濟暨貨幣同盟（Economic and Monetary Union, EMU）財政紀律框架之核心規範，其有效實行是確保EMU會員國財政穩定並使EMU穩健運作之重要關鍵。本研究之研究目的，即在於透過對SGP的立法背景、實行成效與SGP在2005年及2010年經歷的兩次改革內容進行分析，以了解EMU財政紀律發展趨勢及政策啟示。 本研究之研究成果顯示，自1997年SGP制定至今，EMU財政規範始終是以「補漏洞」的方式進行。歐盟非中央化的財政政策是EMU財政規範的有效實行必須期待各會員國善意遵守的根本原因。這項缺陷也使得部分EMU會員國重新思考建立財政同盟的可能。然由於財政同盟代表的是要求EMU各會員國進一步放棄國家主權中的財政自主權，在仍有會員國對此表示疑慮的前提下，歐盟財政治理未來的發展趨勢仍值得吾人持續觀察。 / As a key rule of the fiscal governance frameworks of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the effective implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) is a guarantee of both the fiscal stability of the EMU Member States and the well-function of the EMU. The main purpose of this thesis is to explore the trends of the EMU fiscal disciplines and the messages the EMU fiscal policies deliver through analysis of the background of the SGP, the practice of the SGP and the two modifications to SGP in 2005 and 2010 respectively. The result of this thesis shows that the EMU fiscal governance has been keeping fixing problems ex post facto since the SGP entered into force. And the decentralised fiscal policies explain why the effective implementation of SGP is relying on the willingness of the EMU Member States to follow the rules. This defect makes some of the EMU Member States to reconsider to build a fiscal union, which means to yield the fiscal sovereignty to the EU. Since there are still some EMU Member States concerning over the idea, the future of the EMU fiscal governance is still developing.

This thesis concerns fiscal rules which represent a possible solution of excessive deficits of public budgets. The chosen topic is very relevant as most developed countries are now facing the problem of fiscal imbalance. The aim of the thesis is to analyze existing rules in the Czech Republic and to formulate recommendations for its public budgets with regard to the specifics of the economic and political environment. The main hypothesis is that fiscal rules in the Czech Republic are not well designed and do not contribute to the stabilization of public finances. This hypothesis was partially proved true. Proposal to strengthen the fiscal framework by implementation of the reform of medium-term expenditure frameworks and by adopting debt rule at the constitutional level results from the realized findings. Further recommendation is to establish independent fiscal institution that would oversee the fiscal policy in the Czech Republic.

The diploma thesis focuses on the current economic problems of the eurozone, which are caused by the existence of independent monetary policy and seventeen fiscal policies. The theoretical part describes the complex relationship of fiscal and monetary policies as well as the optimum currency area criteria. The practical part analyzing monetary policy in terms of inflation, inflation differentials, development of the real effective exchange rate, credit expansion and the impact of low interest rates on the creation of housing bubbles. Analysis of fiscal policy focuses on the criteria of the Stability and Growth Pact in terms of the fiscal deficit and government debt development. At the end, the diploma thesis provides a brief description of the new fiscal agreement and the European Stability Mechanism treaty.

This thesis examines the process of coordination of economic policies of the European Union on the example of the Visegrad countries. The introductory chapter describes the development of the economic policy coordination, discusses the key legal documents that most affected the process of coordination, and assesses the importance of the coordination for the European integration . The second chapter focuses on the latest changes in the legislation relating to the coordination of economic policies. The last chapter describes the influence of the most essential tools for coordinating the countries of the Visegrad Group. Assesses the extent differences involvement Slovakia coordination process, as the only state that groups that have adopted the euro . Assesses the impact of the crisis on developing coordination and lightly touching the issue of the future adoption of the euro in the countries of the Visegrad Group, which still use the national currency.

Europe is in the midst of its deepest crisis since the 1930s where unsustainable debt-to-GDP levels are among the most alarming issues. It is so critical that it is unsure if the Euro can be saved. The risk of moral hazard increases within EMU when governments are taking too much risk in their public debt policies due to the anticipation that ECB or other Member States would eventually bail them out. Moreover, the SGP imposes restrictions on government deficits and debts but have previously failed to enforce them. The weakness seen in the past is that no sanctions have been put in place once the limits have been breached and the SGP is therefore incredible. Previous research on common pool and debt spillovers in a monetary union point to an upward drift of public debt as countries join the EMU. Does this argument hold true? In order to find out, 25 OECD countries between the years of 1995 and 2010 are analyzed using System GMM Arellano-Bover/Blundell-Bond one-step estimator. The primary balance, the interest payments, and GDP growth are regressed respectively in order to see through what channel EMU displays its effect. One regression will cover the entire time period and another will only cover the years from 1995 to 2007 in order to isolate the effects of the current crisis. The results, based on the years over the entire time period (including the crisis) suggest that the effect of an EMU Membership goes via the Interest payments which it is connected to positively. By using the equation of debt dynamics, the fact that net debt interest payments are higher for a country within EMU indicates, all else equal, that they have on average higher levels of debt. Nevertheless, this realization might be a crisis phenomenon and the implication of this is not clear. However more importantly, the regressions based on the years of 1995 and 2007 (prior to the crisis) did not display any significant results. These results indicate that there is no significant relationship between a country’s membership in EMU and its level of debt prior to the crisis.