Budgetary Responsibility Council: rules for a balanced budget are ineffective

Despite good economic conditions, the former government failed to achieve a balanced budget, the Budgetary Responsibility Council states in its Assessment of the Implementation of the Balanced Budget Rule in 2019, which it released on Thursday. The Council points out that the former government failed to achieve its medium-term objective despite higher-than-planned revenues and lower interest rates on debts, as expenditures grew well above the framework of the budget plan. These developments and other measures significantly worsened the state of public finances at the time of the coronavirus crisis and made it more difficult for the country's economy to recover. According to the Council, an independent institution should evaluate the so-called "balanced budget rule" with the possibility of automatically triggering a correction in the event of a significant deviation.