Coordinating European Budget Policies: for a proactive and geometrized strengthened cooperation

Is not the European Union (EU), as an integrated regional space, an ideal place to implement new public policies? Situated at an intermediate level between the national and the world, can it not bring solutions for the future that will make it possible to solve the economic crisis, especially by recreating public intervention? The need to rethink European policy is all the more pressing because we face today:-a loss of substance of national policies with globalization;-a weak coordination of national or regional public policies;-deficiencies in world governance, especially due to the lack of authorities that are able to implement public policies on a global scale (Bance, 2011a and 2011b);-a major crisis that is hitting the EU with full force (see the first chapter by Bance above). The subject of this chapter is therefore to study the determinants, extent, conditionality, and forms of new modalities for implementing coordinated European budget policies. It will be shown that coordination of public policies requires strengthened cooperation. We will take the perspective of proactive management (Martin, 1983) of economic policy, by the institution of new European rules of the game. We will try in this way to lay the foundations of a renovated approach that aligns the EU. The analysis will be made in three steps. First, we will state what the theoretical justifications and formal determinants of the coordination of budget policies are. We will then examine the modalities of implementation and the limits of European policies in the context of the current crisis. Finally, we will analyze the possible means of expression of renovated public intervention for strengthened cooperation, based on a new model of "geometrized" European policy.