The PBO has published its 2015 Budgetary Planning Report, which analyses the Economic and Financial Document (EFD), further developing the issues addressed in the Parliamentary hearing of 21 April this year. More specifically the PBO analyses the macroeconomic forecasts set out in the EFD for the 2015-2019 period and discusses the risks present in the economic scenario, especially as regards developments in international variables. It then examines the trend and policy scenarios for the public finances, the threats to their sustainability, consistency with European fiscal rules, the measures envisaged in the spending review and the reorganization of tax relief measures addressed in the EFD.
The final chapter examines an event that occurred after the publication of the EFD that could impact the public finances: the ruling of the Constitutional Court on the revaluation of pension benefits. In order to assess the potential impact of the ruling – in the absence of corrective action by the Government – the Report calculates the size of the foregone revaluation for selected categories of pensioner. It then discusses the repercussions that the ruling could have on compliance with the fiscal rules.
