The European Council reached an agreement on the economic governance of the post-crisis European Union. It goes well beyond the simple reform of the Stability and Growth Pact as it is intended to avoid new debt crises in the future by taking into account not only imbalances in the national accounts of the Eurozone countries (as in the Greek case) but, more generally, diverging economic indicators including private debt (particularly relevant in the Irish and Spanish cases).
The Policy Brief addresses this topical issues by underlying the importance of both public and debt levels (a matter which prompted a lively debate in the Council) and by showing links with the economic performance of Euro-zone countries.