Austerità o politiche coordinate ed espansive? Le difficili scelte delle autorità europee

The paper deals with the debt crisis in the euro zone. The literature presents two interpretations of these events. The first attributes the responsibility of the crisis to the political authorities of the countries under attack. They let the citizens live beyond the standard allowed by the economy. This interpretation supports the use of austerity policies to solve the crisis. The second interpretation argues that the political authorities of all the European Union are responsible for the crisis. They kept alive an institutional organization of the coordination process between monetary and fiscal policies, which was known to be faulty. The paper presents theoretical and empirical arguments in favour of the second interpretation. It argues that austerity fails to stabilise the public debt and contends that a coordination process based on effective enforcement and on a European Fiscal Agency can achieve better results by favouring the adoption of coordinated and expansive fiscal policies.