Constitutional Limits

A big case has been made in Europe for countries to pass a constitutional amendment limiting the size of the permitted deficit.

And on the surface it sounds rather good.

Spain has just reached agreement between the two main parties limiting its deficit to 0.4% of GDP by 2020, which sounds too good to be true (you will remember that the Eurozone tried to limit deficits to 3% and neither France nor Germany was able to do it, thus rendering it a nonsense).

But the terms of the proposed Spanish constitutional amendment allow for this limit to be abandoned in times of natural disaster, economic recession or other exceptional circumstances.

So actually it's quite worthless.

In the end, a constitution is just a set of laws which require a larger majority to amend them. But it can be amended.