… though it is probably not a deeply academic or philosophical one.
Reading the Economic and Financial Outlook, published with last year’s budget in Ireland I spot on page 24 the following sentence:
In the EU Commission’s assessment of the Programmes, a greater emphasis will be placed on fiscal policies for the following year(s) – in other words, there will be more ex ante analysis of budgetary plans as opposed to the ex post analysis that characterised the approach heretofore.
Now I am seriously wondering if we needed such a thorough global crisis and then further two to three years to arrive at such wisdom?
COMMEDIA DELLA VITA OR PÁNTA RÊI'S FIRM GROUND 
Well, at least they finally arrived there – whereas in Austria the Rechnungshof is still only allowed to do ex post assessment, though one can read on the website that also government counselling is part of its tasks – but even then it’s only ex post counselling: please do better next time. I don’t know how it works in other countries?
The other question: what will the commission’s assessment focus on? Will this be beneficial for the Irish?
"Mi piace""Mi piace"
On the second, depends on …? As the Irish are still a very faithful people, leaning towards (which of course, is Europe too) THE IRISH will stick to what they get from Rome – faith and comfort – while some Irish will get benefits from the EU. But in all honesty, I think it is a rather complicated and contradictory issue which I will point out in Vienna during the EUROMEMO group – heading their tomorrow and the “paper” will soon be uploaded at http://www.euromemo.eu/annual_workshops/2011_vienna/papers_v/index.html (had been late in submitting – happens if you write 80 pages for a 20 minutes presentation.
Indeed, all this is not least a question I turn towards the end of the document, making reference to Joerg’s wordds couple of years back there (still have to translate that part from German; but I also have to complete the paper anyway…)
So your question goes little stray insofar as it strongly keeps the focus on the nation state and maintaining it (this had been just one hour ago a topic of my Finish PhD-students)
"Mi piace""Mi piace"