The Frugal Four and the European Fiscal Rules: Discipline or expansion?

The Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden - the so-called frugal four - have been championing fiscal discipline for the last decade. Gernot Blümel - the Austrian finance minister - has called his peers from Northern European countries, including the Baltics and the Netherlands, to form a political alliance ahead of the European Commission’s consultation on reforming the fiscal rules. What should these rules look like? Should there be fiscal discipline or expansion in the future? How will the new rules benefit the citizens of the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and Sweden? What would the implications be for other countries?

Keynote speaker: (Head of the General Economic Policy Department in Austria’s Ministry of Finance) Alfred Katterl

• (Swedish Trade Union Confederation)Monika Arvidsson

• (Tilburg University and a member of the Sustainable Finance Lab)Harald Benink

• (Danish Socialist People’s Party)Lisbeth Bech-Nielsen