La juridificación de la austeridad fiscal en Europa: restricciones presupuestarias dentro de la dinámica federal europea

One of the features that characterize neoliberalism as it has developed in Europe is the normative entrenchment of the idea of fiscal austerity. In fact, during the last economic crisis, in both the European Left and the Right proliferated Eurosceptic movements and leaders that have embraced as their main leitmovit the critique of austerity and of its negative consequences over the national welfare states. This article explores the means that the juridification of fiscal austerity in Europe has adopted, from its origins in the postwar German ordoliberal doctrine, through its enshrinement in the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties, up to its tightening through the measures of economic recovery negotiated by national executives and European authorities in the aftermath of the recent economic crisis. Furthermore, in order to offer a point of reference for assessing the European system of federal economic governance, this article probes the cooperative federal dynamic that has unfolded historically in the United States of America, where the measures of budgetary discipline enacted in the various states have been complemented, since the New Deal era, with mechanisms of anticiclic intervention stemming from the federal level, which endow the American fiscal policies a flexibility and a pragmatism that the European fiscal policies lack