On 20 November 2014, the PBO participated in the second meeting of the EU Network of Independent Fiscal Institutions (EUNIFI) hosted in Brussels by the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) of the European Commission. Representatives from 28 fiscal councils from 25 EU Member States attended the meeting. The network has a dual objective: on the one hand, to establish lines of communication between the fiscal councils and the Commission, and on the other, to promote the sharing of best practices among the national fiscal councils. During the meeting, discussion focused on the relationship between the methodology developed by the European Commission for calculating structural balances and the different approaches developed at the national level that could help capture the specific characteristics of the economies of the individual Member States and provide a benchmark for comparison with EU estimates.
