La constitucionalización de la regla del equilibrio presupuestario: integración europea, centralización estatal

Intense financial turbulences within the Eurozone have unleashed what has been referred to as the deepest existentialist crisis in the European Union. In order to face it, the institutional balance that sustains the European Union since Maastricht has been altered by recent reforms in European law,...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Medina Guerrero, Manuel
Format: Article
Language:Spanish
Published: Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales (España) 2014
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Online Access:https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/oaiart?codigo=4860304
Source:Revista de estudios políticos, ISSN 0048-7694, Nº 165, 2014 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Mutación constitucional en la Unión Europea), pags. 189-210
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Summary: Intense financial turbulences within the Eurozone have unleashed what has been referred to as the deepest existentialist crisis in the European Union. In order to face it, the institutional balance that sustains the European Union since Maastricht has been altered by recent reforms in European law, i.e. the reform of the Stability and Growth, the reform of the very TFEU to allow for exceptions to the no bail-out clause (art. 136.3), and the conclusion of two new Treaties, the Treaty establishing the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism and, above all, the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union, that directs member States to incorporate in their constitutions the «balanced budget rule». Therefore these instruments not only entail centralization of powers in the EU, but also the transformation of the member States’ economic constitutions. This paper aims to examine the impact of the constitutional amendment in the Spain´s federal estructure, and the analysis focus mostly on the Organic Law passed by the central government to implement the new art. 135 CE. This Organic Law has substantially altered the previous legal framework so that the system of intergovernmental relations between the center and the autonomous communities has been deeply reshaped. In order to ensure the fiscal discipline, the communities are now subject to new monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms. Furthermore, communities’ control over their own budgets has decreased because two bail-out mechanisms have been established by the State: the «payments to suppliers fund» and the «regional liquidity fund». These mechanisms are conditioned on the communities’ compliance with the budgetary and economic measures undertaken by the central government. Finally an amendment of the Organic Law (2013) has broadened the debt limit rule by including the commercial debt.