Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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Question 142: To ask the Minister for Finance the legal status of EU Regulation No. 1175/2011 of the European Parliament and European Council of 16 November 2011; if this regulation requires any transposition into Irish law before it takes legal effect; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9448/12]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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The EU Regulation to which the Deputy refers is "Regulation (EU) No 1175/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 November 2011 amending Council Regulation (EC) No 1466/97 on the strengthening of the surveillance of budgetary positions and the surveillance and coordination of economic policies". This Regulation is one of the five EU Regulations and one EU Directive that go to make up the so called Six-Pack of economic governance reform measures that were first announced in 2010. The five EU Regulations came into effect on December 13th, 2011.

The purpose of this Regulation is to contribute to the strengthening of budgetary surveillance within the EU through an amendment to the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact's preventive and corrective arms. At the core of this Regulation is a focus on the Stability and Growth Pact's preventive measures, and it sets out fiscal policy requirements for those Member States whose fiscal deficit is below the threshold tolerance of 3 per cent of GDP. The reference points remain the medium-term budgetary objectives, which themselves are to be updated regularly.

Under the terms of this Regulation, if a Member State deviates significantly from the adjustment path to the medium-term budgetary objective a warning will be addressed to it by the Commission and the Council will, within one month, examine the situation and make recommendations for adjustments, to be made within a maximum of five months. If the Member State fails to take sufficient corrective action within this period, the Commission shall recommend to the Council to adopt (by qualified majority) a decision to this effect, and also revised recommendations on policy measures to be taken by the Member State. If the Council rejects the Commission recommendation, and the Member State persists in not taking sufficient corrective action, a month later the Commission can put another proposal to council which can only be rejected by simple majority (only euro area countries can vote on a decision of non-compliance relating to another euro area country).

Regulations are the most direct form of EU law, in that as soon as they are passed, they have binding legal force throughout every EU Member State, on a par with national laws. National governments do not have to take any action themselves to implement EU regulations.

They are different from EU Directives, which are addressed to national authorities, who must then take action to make them part of national law.