The new Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union: Reflections with regard to a particular Reform carried out outside the Constitutives Treaties

Abstract

On 2 March 2012, twenty-five of the twenty-seven EU member States (i.e., all of them except the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic) signed the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union (TSCG). Its aim was to endow the EU with the economic «leg» that it was not politically possible to include in the Maastricht Treaty and the negative consequences of which have emerged dramatically during the current economic and financial crisis. This important treaty thus includes, among other important aspects, the obligation to effectively limit the structural deficits of the member States of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), and attributes jurisdiction to the EU Court of Justice to verify fulfilment of this obligation; it has also introduced mechanisms for the coordination and supervision of national plans for issuing public debt and reinforcement of the economic coordination and governance of the Euro zone. 
However, the main novelty of the TSCG is the peculiar legal path through which it was drawn up, to wit, an international treaty entered into disregarding the mechanisms for reforming the constitutional treaties of the EU expressly provided for ad hoc in article 48 of the Treaty of the EU. This poses an important range of legal and institutional issues, such as the role that this treaty —signed outside the EU framework— attributes to EU institutions such as the European Commission and the European Court of Justice.
In short, it is a very peculiar treaty that has to be interpreted as a provisional and transitory «emergency fix» at an extraordinarily delicate political and economic moment for Europe. Despite this, its final destiny should be its future incorporation into the framework of the constitutional treaties of the EU.