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Dec 31, 1969
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In order to comply with the EU’s budgetary rules in the absence of debt restructuring, Portugal would have to implement significant cuts in education, health and social protection budgets, and tax increases over and above those that were implemented in the past four years.
In a column of the global labour university a triangle of impossibility is described with the following vertices: the first is the full payment of the public debt according to the prevailing interest rates and maturities; the second is compliance with EU budgetary rules; the third corresponds to the preservation of minimum welfare state standards. The triangle of impossibility suggests that, given the current conditions, it is not possible to fulfil all three conditions at the same time. In order to comply with the EU’s budgetary rules in the absence of debt restructuring, Portugal would have to implement significant cuts in education, health and social protection budgets, and tax increases over and above those that were implemented in the past four years. Alternatively, if the country is to preserve minimum levels of Welfare State, it must either restructure its debt and/or postpone compliance with EU budgetary rules.
English: http://column.global-labour-university.org/2015/02/trouble-ahead-in-portugal ...
For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the communications officer at the ETUI, Mariya Nikolova mnikolova@etui.org. For previous issues of the Collective bargaining newsletter please visit http://www.etui.org/E-Newsletters/Collective-bargaining-newsletter. You may find further information on the ETUI at www.etui.org, and on the AIAS at www.uva-aias.net.