The president of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF), Cristina Herrero, participated today in the International Conference of Councils on Economic Policy, organized by the German Council of Economic Experts (Sachverständigenrat Wirtschaft) and the French Council of Economic Analysis (Conseil D’Analyse Économique, CAE). The Conference assembled the economic advisors of the major governments.
In her speech, AIReF President Cristina Herrero stressed that we are facing a period of slow recovery marked by uncertainty and the need to reintegrate the high number of workers currently under an unemployment protection scheme into the labour market throughout the EMU and to ensure that businesses in the most affected sectors remain viable. In this context, it will be necessary to maintain more focused fiscal and liquidity support measures, especially in those economies with less fiscal space. Active employment policies could enable the reallocation of workers to less affected sectors.
She added that, while the current priority is to manage health and the economic crisis, governments must design, sooner rather than later, a credible and transparent medium-term fiscal strategy aimed at reducing the level of debt and rebuilding fiscal room for manoeuvre to deal with future crises. She also spoke in favour of the European Commission’s ‘Next Generation EU’ proposal and highlighted the challenge faced by economies in designing appropriate reform and investment plans to boost medium-term growth.
AIReF’s president spoke on the panel “Economic policies after the (partial) lifting of COVID-19 containment measures“, moderated by Lars P. Feld of the German Council of Economic Experts, together with Tomas J. Philipson of the US Council of Economic Experts, Joonkyung Ha of the South Korean National Council of Economic Experts, Camille Landais and Stéphane Carcillo of the French Council of Economic Analysis, and Monika Schnitzer and Volker Wieland of the German Council of Economic Experts.
Niels Thygesen, from the European Fiscal Board; Pekka Sinko, from the Economic Council of Finland; Sebastian Barnes, from the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council; and Yves Giroux, from the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Office, participated in the second panel of the conference, ‘Fiscal stimulus packages to counteract the economic consequences of COVID-19‘.