Conceptualising Excessive Deficit in the Eurozone: Expertise, Regulatory Standards and Risk Communication

Expertise plays a critical role in the construction of risk regulatory standards. One key element to understanding these regulations is risk communication. However, while most scholars focus on risk communication between regulators and the lay public, communications internally among experts remain relatively under-studied. This paper therefore seeks to investigate the internal perspective of risk communication, by empirically looking at the formulation of EMU fiscal rules. The fiscal rules laid down in the Maastricht Treaty require Member States to keep their deficits under 3% and debts under 60% of their respective GDP. These ceilings have thus defined excessive deficits and conceptualised the ‘risk’ of the EMU. Through archives and interviews, my findings suggest that experts have framed risk positively and narrowly in the discussion, and the creation of technical consensus was heavily politicised. It seems that inter-expert risk communication is not purely scientific and technical as many risk communication studies presupposed.