Book Description

On 14 February 2012, the European Commission presented its first Alert Mechanism Report (AMR), prepared in accordance with Article 3 of Regulation (EU) No. 1176/2011 on the prevention and correction of macroeconomic imbalances. The AMR serves as an initial screening device, helping to identify Member States that warrant further in-depth analysis to determine whether imbalances exist or risk emerging. According to Article 5 of Regulation No. 1176/2011, these country-specific ?in-depth reviews? should examine the nature, origin and severity of macroeconomic developments in the Member State concerned, which constitute, or could lead to, imbalances. On the basis of this analysis, the Commission will establish whether it considers that an imbalance exists and what type of policy follow-up it will recommend to the Council. For Sweden, the AMR suggested the need to look more closely at whether Sweden is exhibiting macroeconomic imbalances of an internal and external nature. On the external side, the AMR highlighted a long series of strong current account surpluses which, however, coincided with a loss in market shares over the last years. On the internal side, the high level of private debt was identified as a matter of concern, mainly due to increasing household indebtedness in the context of strong increases of house prices over the last decade. Against this background, Section 2 of this review looks more in detail into these developments covering both the external and internal dimensions, followed by specific focus sections on the housing market and private sector debt developments in Section 3. Section 4 summarises the findings and presents possible policy considerations.