Mr. Seamus Coffey:

Yes. Some early proposals from the European Commission in early communications in late 2022 did see a more significant role for fiscal councils. Once those proposals got as far as the European Council level, at ECOFIN, there was a big step back from it. The European Commission was proposing that the fiscal councils would be involved in the design phase of budgets, perhaps in terms of assessing whether there was compliance with parameters previously agreed.

In March 2023 ECOFIN said that fiscal councils will have no role in the design phase of budgets. As my colleague Dr. Casey said, when it comes to the assessment, it does at this stage seem to be driven primarily by the Commission. The Commission is saying that it would like more national and domestic ownership of these plans and would like a domestic first line of assessment to be undertaken by fiscal councils but without any formal legal status. The final decision would ultimately be with the European Council and whatever the Commission's assessment was and that a local or national fiscal council could undertake its assessment but it would only be something that feeds into the process and would not have any legal standing.