How is it possible to avoid a structurally more restrictive fiscal policy in the euro zone than in other OECD countries?
Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan, the euro zone is made up of several countries that each has sovereign debt. This creates a risk specific to the euro zone: the risk of a public debt crisis in one country leading to the risk of the euro breaking up. Such a crisis does indeed generate a negative externality on other countries, which have to help bail out the country in crisis. As a result, euro-zone countries' fiscal policy must be sufficiently restrictive to avert such a possible debt crisis in each country. This particularity of the euro zone may therefore lead to fiscal policy being more structurally restrictive than in other OECD countries. To avoid this restrictive bias in euro-zone fiscal policy, the only solution is to transfer some of the countries’ public spending to the euro zone, by making the European Recovery Plan financed by issuing European debt (eurobonds) permanent by transforming it into a European investment budget.