ABSTRACT
Economic governance in the European Monetary Union (EMU) is based on a complex set of rules and procedures. While monetary policy is centralized with the European Central Bank (ECB), the member states retain autonomy in other important fields of economic policy-making. In order to avoid negative spill overs in the interdependent economies of the EMU and European Union (EU), various procedures and processes to coordinate national policies have been devised. These are the Stability and Growth Pact and the Excessive Deficit Procedure of the Maastricht Treaty which limit national fiscal discretion. In addition, various processes relying on soft coordination and voluntary policy alignment, such as the European Employment Strategy, the Cardiff Process on structural reform, the Macro-Economic Dialogue or the Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Employment have been set up. The annual Broad Economic Policy Guidelines (BEPG) bring together the different approaches and economic policy objectives in a single framework.1 Whereas critical evaluations of the formal mechanisms of economic governance in the Eurozone and the efficiency of outcomes flourish (see e.g. von Hagen and Mundschenk, 2001; Jacquet and Pisani-Ferry, 2001; Collignon, 2003), most studies neglect the informal transnational structures in which the coordination processes are embedded (but see Pütter, 2003; Schwarzer, 2003).
