Selected state revenue austerity measures in EL, ES, IE and PT

Between spring 2010 and spring 2011, the European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) started providing EL, PT and IE with financial assistance conditional on reducing government deficits, debt accumulation and implementing structural reforms. In 2012 ES was forced to request assistance from the euro area Member States (MS) for its hard-pressed financial sector. All four countries1 started fiscal consolidations considered very large in a historical perspective. The attempts to reduce the budget deficit (austerity measures) combine expenditure measures such as spending cuts (fiscal consolidation) and revenue measures such as tax rate rises or base broadening.