La riforma del MES ai tempi della pandemia da covid 19. Le principali ricadute sul processo di ridefinizione della governance economica e monetaria europea

The European Commission’s proposal to integrate the ESM into the EU institutional order, transforming it into a European Monetary Fund, has not found the necessary consensus. To date, the reform of the ESM has however become the subject of a different solution, which provides for a revision of the founding Treaty, leaving the nature of the intergovernmental organization of the Fund unchanged. The reform of the ESM suggests automatic debt restructuring whose consequences deserve to be carefully weighed. Among the innovations introduced, the precautionary line coined to deal with the low-conditional health emergency stands out. However, there are numerous rules that lead us to believe that conditionality is an essential element of the ESM and as such it cannot be easily conquered by a simplified line of financial assistance such as, in fact, the “healthcare” ESM. In light of the considerations that will be developed in the context of this work, it emerges that a precautionary line of the ESM, which arises with a “soft conditionality”, could become subject to a “hard conditionality” due to the combined provisions of the Treaty and the “Two Pack”.