Effetti (normativi) e difetti (culturali) nella costituzionalizzazione dell’equilibrio di bilancio

(Normative) effects and (cultural) defects in the constitutionalization of the balanced budget rule

Abstract

The article deals with the constitutionalisation of the budgetary balance rule in the Italian legal system, contextualizing it within the scope of a loyal
cooperation. The balanced budget principle – pre-existing to 2012 – plays a new important role in the European integration, similar to the function of a financial loyalty in the federative processes (in particular, with regard to the German experience). Reconstructing the regulatory framework and the evolution of the European financial convergence discipline – both in the experience of the Stability and Growth Pact and during the Eurozone crisis – the analysis continues focusing on the innovations that the transposition of the European anticrisis measures have determined in the national system. The focus is on the effects of a budgetary law no longer merely formal and on the prospect of weakening the safeguard clauses, to highlight how the tendency to downsize the role of politics with respect to accounting techniques must be relativized. The main theme of the analysis is the question of how the European way of understanding budget balance changes the national paradigms in
the field of public accounting, introducing logics that highlight how equilibrium is to be achieved both in a “dynamic” way and on the basis of decisions that are not to be “technically necessary” but – rather – “politically responsible” (overcoming the traditional Italian cultural approach, of a public accounting made “on the margin” and ex ante).

Keywords: Balanced budget amendment; Fiscal Compact; Budget as a merely formal law.