This paper assesses the actual implications that the current budgetary supervision legal
framework (both in the EU Law and Member States) has had on the Economic Constitution. Although there
are tangible implications for all EU Member States, and the EU as a whole, in this paper I will mainly focus
in the Euro Area, where budgetary discipline rules have greater consequences. Budgetary discipline rules
do not automatically entail austerity measures or undermine the powers of Parliaments, at least in theory.
They have however probably had a crowding-out effect for the construction of a (real) economic union, in
that measures to construct fiscal capacity and tax integration to discuss public spending or to attain a real
banking union (to name just a few) have been watered down if not abandoned outright
