The European Parliament approved in the plenary session the economic governance package of six new draft laws. However the plenary vote was tight with left-of-centre groups abstaining and voting against some parts of the deal for fear that the package is overly focused on budgetary correction. Now the Council can formally agree on the new economic governance plans.

The Parliament voted favourably on the economic governance package following the agreement reached among the Permanent Representatives to move forward on the so-called "six-pack" of economic measures. According to MEPs, the application of these measures will help to ensure that Eurozone members tackle unsound economic policies more promptly, considerably increases transparency and accountability and will improve the compilation of statistics to make them more reliable and accurate.

With the deal recently reached by Member States on the new rules, it will force Eurozone governments to muster a majority to block a warning being issued. Neither can the governments opt to do nothing, since such a warning will in any event be issued if the vote is not taken within 10 days of it being proposed by the Commission. And if governments do vote to reject a warning, they will need to explain themselves to the European Parliament in public. MEPs also won during negotiations the right to invite finance ministers from countries that have received a warning to hearings. Member States long insisted that this should not be the case.

MEPs believe that thanks the new rules Commission will no longer ignoring warnings to correct Eurozone members budgetary policies. The Commission would look not only at countries with a trade deficit, but also at those running current account surpluses, when investigating the sources of macroeconomic instability. The agreed rules will therefore require the Commission to consider the possibility that countries like Germany or the Netherlands are a cause of instability and reforms could be asked of them too.