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The President of the Portuguese Public Finance Council was one of the speakers invited by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to participate in the workshop "Fiscal Guardrails against Rising Debt and Looming Spending Pressures", held at the National Bank of Belgium on 10 March in Brussels, Belgium.
The workshop brought together experts in fiscal rules, fiscal councils, academics, policymakers, and fiscal councilors to discuss strategies for improving compliance with fiscal rules and building credibility.
According to the IMF, elevated public debt and spending pressures present significant sovereign risks and complex policy tradeoffs for governments. While rules-based fiscal frameworks can help attenuate these challenges and help rebuild fiscal buffers, compliance with fiscal rules has been inconsistent. Post-pandemic, countries have adopted different approaches to revising their fiscal rules, but new challenges have emerged. Significant deviations from established rules coupled with a lack of supportive fiscal institutions-such as effective independent oversight from fiscal councils – pose credibility concerns and reduce the resilience of fiscal rules against severe shocks and impending spending pressures.
In this context, Nazaré da Costa Cabral participated in the roundtable discussion on "Challenges facing Fiscal Councils to foster fiscal discipline", alongside Mateusz Szczurek, Board Member of BGK Poland, Lilia Cavallari, President of the Italian Parliamentary Budget Office, and Alessandro Giustiniani, Council Member of the Irish Fiscal Council.
The President of the CFP focused her presentation on the need for Independent Fiscal Institutions with broad mandates to reinforce channels of interaction with various other actors (governments, European institutions, central banks, other independent fiscal institutions, and various national and international actors), given the changing nature of fiscal policy and the challenges that arise from it.
Date of last update: 11/03/2025
