text: Structural reforms: To ensure that implementation of needed structural reforms will not face disincentives due to the regime of complying with the adjustment path towards reaching a declared MTO, it was agreed that implementation of major structural reforms (if they have direct long-term cost-saving effects – and can be verified to improve fiscal sustainability over the long term – i.e. pension scheme reforms), should automatically allow for a temporary deviation from the MTO or its adjustment path, equal to the costs of implementing the structural reform, in the condition that the 3% deficit limit will be respected and the MTO or MTO-adjustment path will be reached again within the four-year programme period.
  Reform changes of the correcting arm
  Definition of excessive deficits:
  Deadlines and repetition of steps in the excessive deficit procedure:
  Taking into account systemic pension reforms:
  Focus on debt and fiscal sustainability:
  Reform changes of the economic governance
  Fiscal governance:
  Statistical governance:
  Reforms 2011–13
  The 2010 European sovereign debt crisis proved the serious shortcomings embedded in the SGP. On one hand, fiscal wisdom was not spontaneously followed by the majority of Eurozone Members during the early-2000s expansion cycle. On the other hand, the EDP was not duly carried out, when necessary, as the cases of France and Germany clearly show.