From the Introduction:

Fiscal soundness is a precondition to macroeconomic and price stability and a driver for sustainable economic growth. Factors that de-stabilise fiscal policy may cause serious instability and sizeable distortions to the overall macroeconomic environment, heightening, for instance, uncertainty for the future and fuelling inflationary expectations.

In this regard, monitoring fiscal developments and progress is extremely important, especially within a currency union (such as the eurozone), because: principally, and with reference to recent experience, within a monetary union (an environment which is relatively insulated from exchange rate shocks) individual member states' fiscal efforts may be quite lax, lacking the rigor or thrust required (possibly einforcing deficit and debt dynamics) with adverse consequences for growth prospects. In addition, national fiscal policy in individual member countries may be conducted with a strong bias towards domestic objectives, diverging from (or even undermining) as a result, the union's common objectives.

Specifically, chronic fiscal imbalances in many eurozone memberstates may have led economic policy developments through a ‘more relaxed’ implementation of the union’s rules and norms; a fact that in the longer term may lead to a gradual erosion of the rationale for adopting harmonised and coordinated fiscal policy action. Moreover, national economic policy goals may, in some cases, run counter to the Central bank’s target of maintaining price stability. In many cases, the above may result in implementation delays, bottlenecks or postponement of policies required to attain convergence to the union’s overarching objectives.