The discretionary response

The Pact no longer diminishes the perception of hazard as originally intended. This points to the antagonistic relationship between the programmatic (expertise/law) and operational (politics) dimensions of budgetary governance. To reduce the downside risks facing the fiscal framework and restore its shattered legitimacy, officials need to tackle the problem of reconciling the dualism of national fiscal sovereignty and policy convergence. One response to this new environment came in the form of a European Council agreement entitled ‘Improving the Implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact’. Five areas of improvement were identified by Ecofin and entrenched in the ‘political compromise’, which the European Council formally sanctioned in March 2005.Footnote ¹¹

Success depends on the strength of and adherence to clear rules that favour discipline-oriented budgets. Whereas the reference values were retained, an increased focus on debt sustainability – with a greater emphasis on current national developments – improves the economic logic of the Pact. In addition, the following recommendations are deemed necessary:

1. 1) enhance the economic rationale of the budgetary rules to improve their credibility and ownership;

2. 2) improve ‘ownership’ by national policymakers;

3. 3) use more effectively periods when economies are growing above trend for budgetary consolidation in order to avoid pro-cyclical policies;

4. 4) take better account in Council recommendations of periods when economies are growing below trend;

5. 5) give sufficient attention in the surveillance of budgetary positions to debt and sustainability.Footnote ¹²

From these statements, one may extrapolate the individualising tone underscoring the mentality of reform. The uniform requirement of CTBOIS is replaced with new, differentiated MTOs. Fresh provisions are measured in cyclically adjusted terms. From the revamped MTBR to a comprehensive account of ‘other relevant factors’ in the decision to invoke the EDP, the mechanistic and probabilistically aggregating methods akin to risk located in the original Pact are less visible.

With a renewed emphasis on long-run sustainability, the budgetary surveillance capacity changed with the recognition of ‘differential treatment’ and the accommodation of ‘exceptional and temporary’ circumstances.Footnote ¹³ In expanding the discretionary power of EU experts and officials, such as those located in the Economic and Financial Committee (EFC) or the Economic Policy Committee (EPC), the (re)politicisation of fiscal relations becomes increasingly visible.Footnote ¹⁴ Informal judgment, not just aggregating probabilities, becomes more paramount in appraising budgetary conduct and in the execution of the new fiscal framework. As a ‘crude fiscal coordination mechanism’, Crowley argues that the Pact leaves substantial room for political manipulation.Footnote ¹⁵ Subjective estimations, which are susceptible to political bias, point to a government through uncertainty. This rearticulation of risk and uncertainty into the political imagination of EMU is reconfiguring the politics of limits where expertise/law and politics often overlap and blur.

On the one hand, the consensus is that pro-cyclicality must be deterred. On the other hand, there is a disjuncture between what sounds plausible in law and how it is actually practiced. With the introduction of ‘exceptional’ and ‘other relevant factors’, it is possible to repeat the steps of the EDP if failure to comply may be attributed ‘to unexpected adverse economic events with a considerable impact on the budget’.Footnote ¹⁶ Special circumstances, such as the financial and debt crises, have the potential of delaying adjustments into the third year subsequent to an occurrence. Frictions over this notion of exaggerated lags provoked the proposition of a ‘minimum fiscal effort’, which would see a consolidation of the structural balance by a minimum of 0.5 per cent of GDP. Rather than being obligatory on the ‘corrective arm’, this became the objective for adjustment towards the differentiated MTOs. Yet this criterion may be ‘massaged’ if attempts are frustrated by adverse circumstances, leading Cafruny and Ryner to contend that such discretionary clauses will, in fact, invite arbitrary abuses and irresponsible interpretations.Footnote ¹⁷ Ostensibly, the revisions seem to preclude any direct intrusion into the fiscal affairs of Member States in favour of vague, precautionary mechanisms. The political discourse of uncertainty is becoming more evident. Left unchecked, excessive and diverging budgetary balances can destabilise EMU.

Abuses have indeed exacerbated the dangers brought about by the dilution of the very regulatory mechanism designed to dissuade profligate behaviour. Repeated fictitious data by the worst offender (Greece) together with dubious risk management strategies reveal how a combination of regulatory and market failures have acted as a catalyst for the reconfiguration of state involvement in the economy. With unaltered incentives for compliance, Winkler contends that the SGP has lost its ‘teeth’ to become an impotent tool for fiscal consolidation.Footnote ¹⁸ Arestis and Sawyer echo this sentiment, positing that ‘the death of the SGP is probably a better description of … the revamped SGP in March 2005’.Footnote ¹⁹ Rigid rules may have been supplanted by elastic assessments but at what cost? Less transparent and more complicated than the original framework, contestation and uncertainty abound as to whether the Pact can in fact garner the necessary political commitment upon which its success hinges. The credit crisis has only amplified the politics of uncertainty and unmanageable budgets cast doubt on the commitment to fiscal responsibility. Conversely, is harmonisation plausible given what the Ecofin crisis has revealed about fiscal sovereignty and the asymmetric application of the statutes?

As such, a primary deficiency associated with the original SGP remains. Compliance does not depend solely on a new fiscal framework. As Buti notes:

Indeed, a successful regulatory regime of any kind cannot neglect that national fiscal ownership rests on the internalisation of self-regulation by Member States. Convergence between national interests and EMU objectives demands forecasts, analyses, and recommendations that are specifically tailored to each individual Member State and their unique circumstances rather than vague and generic ones. Given that these relationships are highly politicised, the internalisation of self-regulation is fostered by the convergence of national preferences as the option of defection becomes less attractive. In short, for EMU policy to be successful, it needs to manage individual national contingencies through new compliance procedures that do not infringe excessively on national fiscal sovereignty. Far from assured, the government through uncertainty is a step in that direction.

Flexibility in defining ‘normal’ fiscal conduct is crucial to accommodating state interests and Community ambitions. Risk government lacks this capacity to target the variability and diversity of political decision-making. On the other hand, practices of uncertainty incorporate discretion with creative entrepreneurialism as they help refocus legal responsibility. Member states are envisioned as enterprising subjects entrusted with the duty of prudently managing their fiscal books. It reaffirms sovereignty without sanctioning a culture of distrust as it simultaneously ‘enables and opens up new possibilities for its subjects, and restrains these subjects as they are made subjects of a certain calculative and disciplinary regime’.Footnote ²¹ National fiscal ownership may be enhanced as the government although uncertainty does not inhibit the internalisation of self-regulation as much as a discourse of exogenous risk. Although the greater manoeuvrability which it grants Member States must be in accordance with an infrastructure of referentiality (that is, normality) that accommodates their unique contingencies within the context of a broader EMU. Arguably, states are more amenable to accept responsibility for their fiscal policy if they can identify common linkages between what they, and the EU, consider normal budgetary conduct. The alternative (uniform rules) has proven a failure.

Migration of risk

To properly understand the recodification of expertise/law and politics through the mobilisation of uncertainty, we first need to know how calculative frames became adopted in Europe. As hinted above, risk is typically calculated in terms of probabilistic estimations. Statistically refined by economists, ‘risk is the measure of variance around an expected value’ and is considered a tangible phenomenon/force.Footnote ³³ Once this degree of probability is determined, it is then transformed – as ‘objective knowledge’ – through technologies into a capacity to mitigate abnormalities. In his article, Kessler discusses these symptoms of predictive positivism.Footnote ³⁴ Although the government through risk informs EMU policy, it is not indigenous to this space. To appreciate the transition to modes of uncertainty, we first need to trace how risk has captured the imagination of EU policymakers to help define the EMU regulatory response to the problem of fiscal profligacy. This knowledge will help us understand how calculative frames are used to reconfigure spaces and orders of political and legal responsibility.

Against the backdrop of the extremely volatile financial markets of the 1980s and the fears triggered by the collapses of, among others, Barings, Matellgesellschaft, and Long-Term Capital Management the following decade, risk began to dominate the agenda of both private and public actors.Footnote ³⁵ With a calculus of probabilities at their disposal, EMU officials came to understand fiscal profligacy as a problem rooted in the language, ideas, and methods of commercial risk management (for example, risk metrics). Increasingly, Walters and Haahr submit that risk began to displace other forms of understanding EMU governance – through the lens of national economic security or in terms of socioeconomic classes.Footnote ³⁶ In order to promote sustainable budgetary balances, a risk-based SGP depreciated the role of informal judgement and policy discretion. Surveillance rested on the Pact being transparent, consistent and equally administered in accordance with the quantitatively defendable process of risk. An arsenal of probabilistically predictive mechanisms was deployed to achieve these objectives.

Neither unique to EMU nor politics for that matter, the migration of risk from the corporate sector and the study of how it has informed the design of the fiscal regulation remains underdeveloped in IPE. Instead, risk has been accepted as a natural fixture of EMU governance. To dispel this misconception, this article analyses European public sector management according to three primary organisational elements of risk identified by Michael Power.Footnote ³⁷ Having a sound sense of how risk penetrated EMU, we may then evaluate how its authority to shape spaces and conduct changed with the expansion of sovereign debt.

The first concerns the emergence of risk-based ‘internal control’ in redefining organisational governance. Initially of principal interest to the field of financial auditing, internal control systems have been expropriated as a governance mechanism not only to the entire corporation but to the ‘broader public space’, thus equating them as ‘co-extensive with risk management’.Footnote ³⁸ Early warning systems, such as those employed by Ecofin, under Article 99(4) of the TEU, externalise institutional control arrangements as they monitor for budgetary positions that ‘are not consistent with the broad guidelines or risk jeopardising the proper functioning of EMU’. To buttress its relative position in the Stage III surveillance process, DG EcFin underscores the significance of cyclical economics and econometric budgetary forecasting in the early warning alerts issued by Ecofin on the Commission's recommendation.

Simultaneously embodying and constituting the objects of governance, internal controls ‘translate primary risks into systems risks’, thereby allowing EMU to standardise its approach to potential dangers.Footnote ³⁹ Codified in Council Regulation 1466/97 as part of the ‘preventative arm’, this procedure connects various regulatory bodies which would otherwise be fragmented. Order is established across multiple sites within EMU through the coordination of resources in the identification and monitoring of threats before they happen. Unfortunately, this logic proved fallacious in 2003, 2008 and 2010.

Next is ‘operational risk’, whose variable form makes providing a precise and incontestable definition problematic; something which is characteristic of risk in general. But perhaps a broad definition offered by the Basel Committee includes the risk of ‘loss arising from various types of human or technical error’ and ‘typically measures of internal performance, such as internal audit ratings, volume, turnover, error rates and income volatility, rather than external factors’.Footnote ⁴⁰ What is striking about this component of risk is that it is actually devoted to regulating through uncertainty more so than risk. As Kessler notes, positivist philosophy often misrepresents uncertainty as a risk.Footnote ⁴¹ Just as there exists no sound measure indicating when the next, a Jerome Kerviel (Société Générale, 2008) will surface to exploit a system, there is no probabilistic method to predict the kind of budgetary policy flip-flopping performed by European politicians. The degree of exigency involved in fiscal politics exceeds the capacity of the economistic/utilitarian calculus of risk.

Initially stressing microeconomic supply-side reforms, Dyson explains how Schroder abandoned the ordo-liberal orthodoxy – to considerable opposition from the Bundesbank – in favour of employment and growth strategies.Footnote ⁴² An informal agreement in 2002 prevented the issuance of an official ‘early warning’ before the election. Soon the ‘Alliance for Jobs’ was quickly scrapped and replaced by ‘Agenda 2010’ (March 2003), targeting labour-market and welfare-state reforms. Thus, politicians, as rogue traders, do not lend themselves to being readily managed as a numerical probability. Herein lies the tension between the programmatic and operational dimensions of fiscal governance. Since operational risk is in fact a form of uncertainty, it is imprudent to problematise its management in terms of risk. As a misguided approach, the original Pact was an inadequate system that only aggravated the operational dangers facing itself.

Finally, the category of ‘reputational risk’ connects the question of legitimacy and power with organisational identity. Simultaneously, the ‘logic of consequences’ anchored in rational expectations confronts, and overlaps, a ‘logic of appropriateness’, which articulates norms of responsible behaviour. Together they produce the growing leverage of ‘reputational capital’ and the devolution of legitimate forms of power.Footnote ⁴³ Automatic sanctions, argued Waigel, would help foster compliance as Member States knew that penalties were virtually a definite consequence of fiscally profligacy. Such conditions would protect the integrity of the rules-based SGP from frivolous decisions; thereby enhancing its legitimacy. However, it was Germany who eventually reneged on its promises as it lobbied with France to hold the SGP in abeyance. Every threat of or actual violation damages the reputation of the Pact. But these temperamental behaviours are too idiosyncratic to be captured in a probability distribution.Footnote ⁴⁴ Thus, reform was necessary to address these exigencies and it came in the modality of uncertainty.

Uncertainty as a boundary object

Now that we understand how the government through risk gained traction in the context of EMU, I now turn to how the political economy of budgetary surveillance has transformed with the transition to uncertainty modes of rule. Keeping in mind that uncertainty is often misrepresented as a risk, I unpack the uncertainty approach through the deconstructive/reconstructive tools of governmentality to reveal its distinct conceptualisation and effects on the relationship between expertise/law and politics in EMU. Similar to risk, the logic of uncertainty has entered the discourse of many disciplines and has been appropriated in diverse ways. Uncertainty is a problematising activity which is aimed at addressing the problem of governing the variability and diversity implicit in fiscal relations according to various logics of authority and responsibility. To govern through uncertainty is to do so:

Here expertise/law must adapt to cope with the flexible (political) dimension of budgetary relations. A more accommodating politics of limits may reconcile the tensions between national fiscal sovereignty and policy convergence. Of course, excessive accommodation often leads to excessive deficits.

Developments in economic theory, and in particular marginal utility and optimal allocation equilibria modelling, reveal how uncertainty is conceptualised.Footnote ⁴⁶ Knight distinguished between risk and uncertainty in his analysis of profit in market economies. He took exception to the ‘practical omniscience’ of every actor in the market purported by economic orthodoxy.Footnote ⁴⁷ Uncertainty is the inescapable reality of entrepreneurialism. ‘Unique’ business decisions are subject to imperfect information about the future. This hinders one's decision-making capacity as expected utility-maximisation is inapplicable in various stages of economic life where uncertainty prevails. Definite numerical probabilities cannot be assigned to outcomes because agents lack a clear notion of the possible consequences of their actions. Not knowing what causal relations maximise utility jeopardises rational actor modelling of a predictive Pareto-efficient equilibrium. Nevertheless, Knight believed that the:

Calculations do occur but in the form of informal judgments emphasising the success of the estimate more so than the actual outcome itself. Often these are reinforced by the ‘shared mental models’ that actors subscribe to, which are cognitive practices used to interpret uncertain environments and discern interests.Footnote ⁴⁹

Sympathetic to Knight's approach, Keynes believed that uncertainty eliminates the numerical measure of incidence preventing the forecasting of such things as prices, war or future interest rates. He also echoed the sentiment that irrespective of the absence of calculable probability:

This is in contrast to the conceptualisation of uncertainty as an unknown risk.Footnote ⁵¹ For Beck, enhanced information or better computational systems subsequently transform uncertainty into risk, which makes it tractable to rational choice modelling. But Keynes argued that there is an epistemological dimension implicit in the qualitative comparison of propositions. Lacking the comparative normality from which to assign a superior outcome, rational choice models are incapable of telling us what to do. In other words, uncertainty is not reducible to risk. This undermines conventional economic orthodoxy as it questions the integrity of its decision-making capacity.Footnote ⁵²

General equilibrium theory often informs liberal intergovernmentalist (IG) studies of EMU in the form of abstract game-theoretic modelling where the intention is to identify the optimal strategy of action.Footnote ⁵³ Presented as ‘scientific knowledge’, risk is said to provide an accurate range of referentiality according to which fiscal conduct may be empirically measured. ‘Win-sets’ represent the negotiating margin of manoeuvre available to state actors during a crisis. For intergovernmentalists, holding the EDP in abeyance against Germany and France simply reaffirms the progressive loss of credibility the Pact endured as larger states shunned its rules at their own discretion.Footnote ⁵⁴

Yet, this ‘desire to replicate the prescriptive and predictive success of the hard sciences and a belief in the infallibility of rationalist-empirical epistemology’ proves inadequate in situations of uncertainty.Footnote ⁵⁵ The selection of outcomes in accordance with the dictates of expected utility modelling is hampered. Should uncertainty only be a risk disguised by cognitive limitations, Blyth argues that:

The social dimensions of risk and uncertainty do not readily lend themselves to statistical aggregation and forecasts.

Conventional theories, such as economic equilibrium models or IG, do not problematise how interrelations define and condition an event; namely the link between governmental rationality and practice. They treat risk and uncertainty as self-evident, monolithic technologies and in the process reinforce a fictitious quantitative/qualitative dichotomy. Nor do they account for the construction of normality, which, as Hacking reminds us, ‘has become one of the most powerful ideological tools of the twentieth century’.Footnote ⁵⁷ These epistemological deficits detract from the explanatory value of mainstream accounts of EMU. To divorce the fiscal regime from political reason by resigning ourselves to a totalising vision of risk or uncertainty hampers our capacity to understand the changing nature of EMU governance. Simply attempting precise technocratic control of something as multifarious and fluid as sociopolitical conduct is virtually impossible. One cannot aggregate and probabilistically pre-empt all the available combinations that factor into the decision-making process. Rather than defining this lack of secure knowledge as a type of incalculable risk, another analytical – as well as governmental – category is necessary. Here is where the value-added of uncertainty is most apparent in the problematisation of European fiscal management.

Whereas the Pact was designed with clear statutes privileging risk management and a (weak) punitive mentality, the operational dynamics of EMU thwart this programme by challenging the idea of a single notion of normality underpinning the legal and political definition of a responsible fiscal subject. Variegated constructions of normality are being tolerated and practiced – for the time being. Because of these unique contingencies, surveillance must monitor how individual state propensities towards fiscal profligacy affect broader EU standards. Increasingly, this depends more on discretion and creative foresight rather than probabilistic modelling to ascertain normality. As countries, such as Germany or Greece, receive differential treatment in what is supposed to be a common monetary union, the relationship between expertise/law and politics is reconfigured.

From this process, variegated prescriptions of responsibility are produced that the EU can use as a leverage to act on the fiscal conduct of individual countries. Similar to Aalberts and Werner, I argue that the invention of sovereignty is reaffirmed by targeting it in the control of Member States.Footnote ⁵⁸ The objective is to foster an enhanced sense of fiscal ownership. Thus, the Pact is a device that acts upon Member States in the attempt to constitute them as specific economic objects of government susceptible to the programmatic ambitions it embodies. Through this subjectification process, authority is exerted to normalise EMU subjects into compliance by mobilising their unique uncertainties.

Medium-term budgetary review

Accelerated by the huge infusion of stimulus following the credit crisis, more than ever, ‘fiscal policy is at the centre of domestic democratic politics’.Footnote ⁵⁹ The Council is adamant that national institutions need to ‘play a more prominent role in budgetary surveillance to strengthen national ownership, enhance enforcement through national public opinion and complement the economic and policy analysis at the EU level’.Footnote ⁶⁰ As the new Code of Conduct stipulates, the improvement and sustainability of public finances is predicated on effective peer support and peer pressure establishing transparent and credible monitoring procedures.Footnote ⁶¹ ‘Europe 2020’ reinforces this message. Unless Member States demonstrate a clear and decisive political commitment to the proper maintenance of their own books, symmetrical, and effective multilateral surveillance remains in doubt. To this end, a strategic dialogue, in the form of the medium-term budgetary review, is scheduled to evaluate the updated Stability and Convergence Programmes (SCP) in order to promote compliance with the statutes.

Whatever faith remains in the disciplinary effect of rules has allowed them to be retained as the centrepiece of multilateral surveillance. Of course, now the architects of EMU recognise the precariousness of relying disproportionately on numerical guideposts for effective fiscal governance. If excessively rigid, rules are breached; if overly lax, they prove redundant. In themselves, fiscal rules are not sufficient enough to either guarantee compliance or promote convergence. Only as stakeholders will governments assume greater responsibility for their budgetary conduct in a manner conducive to the broader goals of European integration. The MTBR is intended to help facilitate this process by engaging individual Member States in a serious political discussion about their latest and forthcoming budgets.

The purpose of the MTBR is twofold: (1) to ensure a proper coordination of national fiscal policies in the euro area; and (2) to provide sufficient peer support and pressure for sound fiscal policies at the national level.Footnote ⁶² By specifying how fiscal programmes will achieve balanced budgets in a sustainable manner, it is possible to minimise the mismatch between budgetary positions and cyclical conditions. In the long-term, the tension between fiscal stabilisation and debt sustainability can be recalibrated as convergent forces help regulate variable policies. Here the MTBR aligns itself with the proposal for a ‘European Semester’ to provide better ex ante integrated fiscal policy coordination. Together, ‘the formulation of more timely country-specific recommendations would benefit all aspects of surveillance – fiscal, macro-financial and structural’.Footnote ⁶³

To deliberate the merits of recent budgetary circumstances and to ensure the effective convergence of national fiscal policies, the MTBR is executed before the summer. Prevention is purportedly enhanced and uncertainty mitigated since this redesign is more complementary to national fiscal calendars. Assessable consultations at this juncture occur after the presentation of updated SCPs but prior to the next round of budgetary planning. At this early stage, the MTBR can help shape the national debate before budgets are finalised. It can encourage domestic reforms leading to the update of national fiscal frameworks and the closer convergence of policy.Footnote ⁶⁴

Concurrently, Member States are invited to submit any information on their policy intentions that they deem pertinent in order to foster a comprehensive dialogue about fiscal programmes. In the past, the MTBR typically reflected the risk projections endorsed in the spring Commission forecasts, which adhered to a ‘no-policy-change’ mentality. To be incorporated, a fair degree of certitude about programmatic detail was necessary. Consequently, as Blyth contends, ‘static models of change … made the content of new institutions a determinate function of the problems faced by previous institutions’.Footnote ⁶⁵ Characteristic of risk analysis, this approach fails to compensate for policy intentions which are merely being entertained but evade being assigned a statistical vector in regards to their probability. Contingency is being neglected. To ameliorate this omission, thus enriching the budgetary surveillance process, the Eurogroup now welcomes the incorporation of such speculative agendas. The Commission is entrusted with evaluating this information in the preparation of forthcoming MTBR discussions.Footnote ⁶⁶

Improved communication and the mobilisation of uncertainty in these redesigned fora provide a better reference of normality in the management of the contingencies facing governments. Such a strategic dialogue ‘underlies the important role that national fiscal rules and institutions can play in the attainment of sound budgetary positions and in the respect of the provisions of the Treaty’.Footnote ⁶⁷ National fiscal ownership may be heightened as closer collaboration improves the identification, assessment, and execution of MTOs and the fiscal programmes in which they are embedded. Initiatives of this sort demand that governments exercise their creative entrepreneurial skills in negotiating the different challenges facing them. Through the MTBR, the Commission is in a position to assist. Better overall governance translates into more prosperous economic conditions as states become less susceptible to idiosyncratic shocks spilling over. Buoyed by favourable markets (that is, ‘good times’) – when they return – constraints on fiscal freedom become more tolerable as the Pact becomes more palatable.

The MTBR is a disaggregating technology which opens up national fiscal spaces to reconfigure legal and political responsibility in EMU. It ‘relativises identities by penetrating or dissolving boundaries around relatively closed systems’ and ‘creates trans-societal and post-territorial discursive spaces and networks of relations’.Footnote ⁶⁸ This challenges the traditional politics of limits between EU institutions and Member States and what are perceived as international/national boundaries. By penetrating the national fiscal landscape, the MTBR may influence the design of budgetary policy to a degree not previously visible. Subsequently, domestic and Community objectives may be perceived as congruous and their interests as interwoven.

Intact, national fiscal sovereignty is nevertheless modulated by the mobilisation of uncertainty as a governmental technique. Uncertainty government exerts an ‘indirect, productive power’, or leverage, which reaffirms sovereign spaces, while simultaneously making governments more susceptible to the endogenous responsibility of managing their own contingency.Footnote ⁶⁹ This contrasts with risk-centred formulas of rule which are, arguably, more exogenous of agency given their preoccupation with supposedly objective and quantifiable knowledge.

At the core of this reassessment is the problematisation of state competence in terms of the relationship between expertise/law and politics. Through these reformed discursive practices, a novel fiscal-monetary space is being constructed where politics and expertise/law overlap to create new orders of responsibility. Rather than binary opposites, legal notions of what is considered proper fiscal conduct are relocated in the political. Through the politics of representation, uncertainty government renders particular EMU stabilisations visible and therefore manageable according to variegated notions of fiscal normality. But these fiscal configurations are temporary and constantly undergoing transformation as they are confronted with domestic, regional and global forces of change. To judiciously regulate fiscal relations means to effectively manage contingencies which are unique to each national context. The current reforms are one step in that direction as they recognise the uncertainty underpinning economic surveillance. Growing sovereign debt woes will only demand additional practices of self-regulation.