Vor dem Hintergrund der Enthüllung, dass Griechenland
vor dem Beitritt zur Eurozone sein Haushaltsdefizit geschönt
hat, schlägt Daniel Gros, Direktor von CEPS, die
Schaffung (nationaler) Unabhängiger Haushaltsagenturen
vor.
The new government in Greece has all of a sudden
found out that its predecessor has been mis-representing for some
time the true situation of public finances. The size of the data
revisions has been extraordinary: the deficit estimate for this
year is now 4.6 % of GDP, almost 3 percentage points higher than
the previous reported 1.7 % % of GDP. The cumulative impact
of the revisions can be seen in the figures for public debt, whose
figure for end 2003 went up from about 103 % of GDP to close 110
%. With the new figures Greece now beats Italy to be
the country with the highest debt/GDP ratio.
Much attention has been focused on the inability of
Eurostat to detect the problem much earlier. But this is not
justified. Eurostat cannot do the statistics for all 25
member countries. Its numbers can only be as good as the raw
data that is provided by member country governments and national
statistical offices. The speed with which Eurostat numbers,
not only for this year, but also for all the years since 2000, have
been changed suggests that even now it has just taken the new Greek
data without analysing the new information in
detail.
However, it cannot be really the task of Eurostat
to play detective with governments. The institution that is
charged with the surveillance of public finances is the
Commission. Unfortunately, this is already the second time in
a few years that the Commission has been caught napping. The
first time came when the deficit for Portugal had to be revised
from a bit above 1 % to over 4 % in 2001/2002. But the
mis-representation by the Greek government is much more serious
since it has been systematic and it might even have in instrumental
in allowing Greece to clear the hurdle of the Maastrich criterion
on the deficit.
What should be the consequences of this
episode? A first conclusion is clear: Monitoring (and
forecasting) must be improved. This requires a substantial increase
in resources. At present the Commission does not even have
one official per member country to deal full time only with the
monitoring of fiscal policy. Given these meager resources the
Commission has to rely on data coming from member country
governments, which makes it impossible to formulate an independent
point of view. But even so the Commission should have noticed
the wide inconsistencies between the path for public debt and the
reported deficits. In principle government debt should go up
only through deficits. But the data published with the latest
Spring forecast contain a discrepancy between the deficit data and
the change in the public debt ratio of several percentage points of
GDP. This alone should have set the alarm bells
ringing.
Given the meager resources at the disposal of the
Commission it might not have been able to do much more than
pointing out the apparent discrepancies between debt and deficit
figures. But this is not enough. The ECFIN should be
allotted more resources to follow public finances in member
countries (especially in the euro area) closely. If this had
been the case it would probably have detected the inconsistencies
in the figures transmitted by the Greek government. After
all, it was widely known that Greece had bought 45 fighter
jets. This should have been reflected in military
expenditures. Moreover, even unreported spending has to show
up in higher government debt. Anybody following Greek
financial markets and the issuance activity of the Greek government
should have noticed the discrepancy with the reported debt numbers
(public debt is now estimated to be 7 % of GDP higher than
before).
In order to be able to really perform the task
assigned to it by the Treat the ECFIN needs dozens, probably more
than a hundred, additional officials to be able to follow and
monitor public finances in member countries in real
time.
Another useful measure would be the creation of
(national) Independent Budget Agencies in member countries similar
to the Congressional Budget Office in the US which performs
independent analysis and monitoring. Such an independent
agency should have caught the ‘oversight’ in terms of military
expenditure, or the surplus of the social security funds. A
national independent Budget Agency could then also report to the
European Commission. Given that governments are increasingly
allocating budgetary activities to agencies beyond the realm of the
general government, standard budgetary analysis should be
accompanied by ‘below the line’ monitoring – that is, debt issuance
and credit to the government – that would provide a cross-check to
the picture provided by the national accounts and, because of its
greater frequency, serve as an early warning device. The Commission
would incorporate the information from these agencies into its
decision process.
Another consequence must be that the applications
of the new members for euro zone membership will have to be
scrutinized much more carefully. This does not concern
Estonia which has been running surpluses for some time, but most of
the others, some of which seem to have lost all control over fiscal
policy, as in the case of the Czech Republic, whose deficit is
expected to have arrived at a staggering 12.6 % of GDP in 2003
(after deficits around 6 % of GDP in the preceding
years).