The Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) introduced

Data extracted on 31 October 2025

Planned article update: November 2026

This article provides information on the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP), as well as on indicators and statistical data used in this context. The MIP is part of the European Semester, which is an annual cycle enabling the European Union Member States to coordinate their economic and social policies throughout the year. The MIP aims to identify potential macroeconomic risks early on, preventing the emergence of harmful macroeconomic imbalances and allowing the correction of existing imbalances.

Background

Regulation (EU) No 1176/2011 defines a macroeconomic imbalance as:

any trend giving rise to macroeconomic developments which are adversely affecting, or have the potential to adversely affect, the proper functioning of the economy of a Member State or of the economic and monetary union, or of the Union as a whole.

While excessive imbalances are defined in the same legal act as:

severe imbalances, including imbalances that jeopardise or risk jeopardising the proper functioning of the economic and monetary union.

As defined in the 2016 Communication on Country Reports, the macroeconomic imbalances categories are the following: no imbalance, imbalances, excessive imbalances, and excessive imbalances with corrective action (Excessive Imbalance Procedure, EIP).

The MIP covers a number of sequential steps, having the Alert Mechanism Report (AMR) and its Statistical Annex (SA) as a starting point. The AMR comprises an economic and financial assessment based on an economic reading of a set of macroeconomic indicators (the MIP scoreboard). It screens all Member States to identify those that may be affected, or may be at risk of being affected, by economic imbalances, and selects Member States for which an in-depth review (IDR) will be prepared.

Eurostat is in charge of producing the SA, a document presenting the MIP indicators for a 10-year period for each Member State and, since 2023, for the European Union and the euro area. The SA and the AMR are published at the same time, where the AMR is based on the data in the SA, as well as more recent available data of higher frequency. The AMR for year t is published in year t - 1, with scoreboard data up until year t - 2 (e.g. the 2026 AMR and SA are published in November 2025 with scoreboard data up to 2024).

Table 1 below shows the MIP scoreboard indicators values used within the latest AMR.

In 2024, both the scoreboard and the auxiliary indicators were streamlined as part of the regular review process set out in the MIP regulation (Art. 4(7) of Regulation 1176/2011). For more information, see The MIP indicators Commission Staff Working Document - On the changes in the scoreboard of the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure.

Following the Commission proposal for a regulation on the effective coordination of economic policies of 26 April 2023, the MIP takes a reinforced forward-looking perspective to identify emerging risks sufficiently early on and to better gauge the prospects for the evolution of imbalances. At the same time, great attention is given to systemic challenges and to developments in the European Union and euro area. EU and euro area aggregates are therefore presented in the SA.

The Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) in the context of the European Semester

Since 2010, the European Union is running an annual cycle of economic and social policy coordination called the European Semester. By achieving stronger economic and social coordination of Member States' policies, the European Semester aims to ensure sustainable economic growth, job creation, macroeconomic stability and sound public finances across the EU. On 30 April 2024, the European Semester was revised as part of the Economic Governance Review (EGR), which seeks to ensure a simpler, more transparent and effective framework with greater national ownership and better enforcement. The European Semester's specific annual cycle begins in autumn with the publication of a policy package known as the Autumn Package, which the AMR is a part of.

The communication on the AMR lays out the list of Member States for which the Commission will prepare country-specific in-depth reviews (IDR), that encompass a thorough assessment of imbalances in the Member State under review, taking into account country-specific economic conditions. The IDRs then provide a comprehensive assessment of imbalances based on a wider set of data, also assessing the risks of spillovers of macroeconomic imbalances to other Member States. Based on IDRs, the Commission concludes whether imbalances or potentially excessive imbalances exist.

The conclusions of the IDRs serve as input for the Commission's proposal of country-specific recommendations on economic and social policy addressed to each Member States in spring. In summer, the Council agrees on the final version of the country-specific recommendations, highlighting areas where Member States need to take further actions to boost growth, job creation, training and education opportunities, research and innovation. The country-specific recommendations for the Member States identified with imbalances or excessive imbalances under the MIP should include calls for policy action to tackle them. The Member States are then invited to address these recommendations.

Outcome of the 2026 AMR

The 2026 AMR was published on 25 November 2025. The economic reading of the MIP scoreboard considers outcomes for 2024 and is interpreted in light of available in-year data for 2025 and the Commission’s 2025 autumn forecast. The conclusion of the 2026 AMR states that IDRs will be prepared for the seven Member States that were identified as experiencing imbalances or excessive imbalances in the previous annual round of MIP surveillance : Greece, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, and Sweden.

The MIP indicators

MIP scoreboard and auxiliary indicators cover external and internal imbalances, competitiveness positions, labour market and social developments. They are calculated from several statistical areas, including National Accounts (NA), Balance of Payments (BoP) and International Investment Position (IIP) statistics, Price statistics, Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP) statistics, Labour Market and Living Conditions statistics. Indicators stemming from the NA, BoP/IIP domains are computed following the European System of Accounts 2010 (ESA 2010) and the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual, 6th edition (BPM6) that guarantee a high level of comparability and internal consistency across Member States.

The MIP scoreboard is a tool to support the early identification and monitoring of imbalances, which in the 2026 AMR consisted of 13 scoreboard indicators (see Table 2). Each scoreboard indicator has indicative thresholds serving as alert levels. However, as in the relevant legal provisions of the MIP, the MIP scoreboard should not be interpreted mechanically. Moreover, the economic reading of the scoreboard indicators is complemented by the analysis of a wider set of 23 auxiliary indicators (see Table 3) that do not have any associated thresholds, but which provide additional information on aspects linked to the general macroeconomic situation.

MIP scoreboard indicators in the 2026 Statistical Annex (SA)

Indicator	Unit	Thresholds	Data source
Current account balance (% of GDP)	3 year average	4% / +6%	Eurostat
Net international investment position	% of GDP	−35%	Eurostat
Real effective exchange rate (42 trading partners, HICP deflator)	3 year % change	±3% (EA), ±10% (non-EA)	DG ECFIN
Export performance against advanced economies	3 year % change	−3%	Eurostat, OECD
Nominal unit labour cost index (per hour worked)	3 year % change	9% (EA), 12% (non-EA)	Eurostat
General government gross debt	% of GDP	60%	Eurostat
Household debt including non-profit institutions serving households, consolidated	% of GDP	55%	Eurostat
Non-financial corporations debt, consolidated	% of GDP	85%	Eurostat
Household credit flow including non-profit institutions serving households, consolidated	% debt stock t−1	14%	Eurostat
Non-financial corporations credit flow excluding foreign direct investment, consolidated	% debt stock t−1 (excluding foreign direct investment)	13%	Eurostat, ECB
House price index, nominal	1 year % change	9%	Eurostat
Unemployment rate	% of labour force aged 15–74	10%	Eurostat
Labour force participation rate	3 year change in pps (% of population aged 15–64)	−0.2%	Eurostat
Table 2 Source: Eurostat thematic section for MIP.

MIP Auxiliary Indicators (2026 AMR)

Indicator	Unit	Data source
Net international investment position excluding non-defaultable instruments	% of GDP	Eurostat
Net lending/borrowing (Current plus capital account)	% of GDP	Eurostat
Net trade balance of energy products	% of GDP	Eurostat
Real GDP per capita	EUR	Eurostat
Gross fixed capital formation	% of GDP	Eurostat
Gross domestic expenditure on R&D	% of GDP	Eurostat
Export market share (% of world exports)	3 year change (%)	Eurostat, IMF
Labour productivity (per hour worked)	1 year change (%)	Eurostat
Core inflation differential vis-à-vis the euro area	pps	Eurostat
Household debt including non-profit institutions serving households, consolidated	% of GDI	Eurostat
Gross non-performing loans of domestic and foreign entities	% of gross loans	ECB
Tier-1 capital ratio of banking sector	% of risk-weighted assets	ECB
Return on equity of banking sector	%	ECB
Standardised house price-to-income ratio	% of long term avg (2000–current)	Eurostat
Building permits	m² per 1000 inh	Eurostat
Long-term unemployment rate	% of labour force aged 15–74	Eurostat
Youth unemployment rate	% of labour force aged 15–24	Eurostat
Employment rate	% of total population aged 20–64	Eurostat
Young people neither in employment nor in education or training	% of total population aged 15–29	Eurostat
People at risk of poverty or social exclusion	% of total population	Eurostat
People at risk of poverty after social transfers	% of total population	Eurostat
Severely materially and socially deprived people	% of total population	Eurostat
People living in households with very low work intensity	% of total population aged 0–64	Eurostat
Table 3 Source: Eurostat thematic section for MIP.

A 3-level quality assurance framework ensures the quality of the MIP indicators. The first level assesses the reliability and comparability of indicators underlying statistics and addresses relevant quality issues; it enhances the communication on quality assurance of MIP statistics towards the European Parliament and Council, policy makers and the public at large by the annual publication of a quality report. This report draws on the information gathered in levels 2 (domain-specific quality reports produced by Eurostat and the ECB) and 3 (national quality reports/self-assessments produced by the institutions compiling the national statistics).

The main source for the MIP scoreboard and auxiliary indicators is Eurostat, using data transmitted by EU countries, following European legislation, although some data are produced by the Commission's Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for the denominator of one scoreboard indicator, the European Central Bank (ECB) for 3 auxiliary indicators based on banking data as well as data for certain components used in the computation of one scoreboard indicator, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the denominator of one auxiliary indicator. The list of the indicators is regularly reviewed and it may evolve over time in order to reflect new developments or needs.

Recent statistical improvements

Looking at data quality, and in particular to cross-domain consistency, Eurostat continues to work on the reconciliation of the balance of payments and the rest of the world (RoW) account at national level, and regularly assesses the state of consistency between BoP and NA statistics.

Moreover, Eurostat and the ECB follow several initiatives to improve consistency and reduce asymmetries. In view of regular data comparisons, Eurostat conducts regular comparisons of quarterly BoP and quarterly/annual sector accounts for the Rest of the World (RoW) sector. The harmonisation of methodological standards (ESA2010 and BPM6) has helped to eliminate some previous discrepancies.

The implementation of the harmonised European revision policy (HERP) for NA and BoP statistics, covering benchmark and routine revisions, is progressing on a voluntary basis.

In the National Accounts domain, Member States – with the exception of one country - carried out a benchmark revision of their NA estimates in 2024, following recommendations of the HERP. The purpose of this benchmark revision was to implement changes introduced by the amended ESA 2010 regulation, and to incorporate new data sources and other methodological improvements. All revisions were closely monitored and validated by Eurostat. The main changes, dates and overviews of national releases were published on Eurostat’s ESA 2010 data revision web page.

In the Balance of Payments domain, progress has been made on addressing the asymmetries in statistics for trade in goods and services and foreign direct investment (FDI). Eurostat continued activities to further reduce asymmetries, in particular the follow up of some of the recommendations resulting from the previous International Trade in Services Statistics (ITSS) Asymmetry Resolution Mechanism (ARM). It is an ongoing initiative to obtain the Member States’ VAT Information Exchange System (VIES) data for the intra-EU exports side, and the development of a flexible tool to exchange on a bilateral basis information on compensation of employees. In addition, an ARM is managed by ECB and Eurostat in the context of quarterly BoP production. The purpose of this ARM is to facilitate bilateral and/or multilateral reconciliation exercises to reduce asymmetries in FDI.

Eurostat has also been working to provide further guidance on the treatment of non-resident VAT traders in BoP statistics. Eurostat hosted a workshop on non-resident VAT traders in April 2024. Based on these findings, Eurostat published in February 2025 a ESA 2010 Methodological Note “Foreign trade reported by non-resident VAT traders (NR-VATT), 2025 edition”, providing BoP/IIP compilers with harmonised recommendations consistent with the change-of-economic-ownership principle in BPM6/ESA 2010.

In the domain of Financial Accounts, some ongoing initiatives will be beneficial for the quality of MIP indicators: the recording of other equity, of derivatives, of loans between non-financial corporations, of foreign-controlled corporations and special purpose entities, and the analysis of the vertical discrepancy with Non-Financial Sector Accounts. On the latter, Eurostat and the ECB published a report with recommendations with the aim of improving vertical consistency across institutional sectors in order to enhance cross-country comparability.

Concerning the Labour Force Survey (LFS), in 2021, the EU regulation 2019/1700 (Integrated European Social Statistics Framework regulation, IESS FR) entered into force, together with its LFS implementing regulation (the EU regulation 2019/2240). The innovations introduced concern all aspects of the survey, in order to harmonise the fundamental survey features among Member States. Together with the IESS regulation, several Member States introduced national specific innovations.

Consistency in MIP scoreboard indicators stemming from the LFS has been ensured thanks to back-calculation, as required by the new regulation. Although labour market indicators in the MIP scoreboard may show different figures than in the past, including in the initial part of the series, series are consistent over time and multi-annual indicators are calculated with consistent figures.

In the House Prices domain, the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1470, which establishes the methodological and technical specifications for the house price index and the owner-occupied housing price index, was adopted in 2023. This regulation has been applied to all data transmissions since 1 January 2024, and previously transmitted data have, where necessary, been revised where data sources are available. In consultation with several Member States, Eurostat has complemented most of the cases of missing data for the auxiliary indicator “Standardised house price-to-income ratio” in the early years of the back series with appropriate estimates.

General Government Gross Debt data notified for the years 2021 to 2024 were released on 21 October 2025 within the EDP notification. For more information on the main revisions between April 2025 and October 2025 notifications, please see the latest EDP news release. Timeliness and availability of General Government Gross Debt data remained excellent. In February 2023, Eurostat published an updated version of the Manual on Government Deficit and Debt.

Published AMRs

The complete list of the AMRs, SAs and Eurostat's news items are published on the MIP dedicated web section. Table 4 shows the publication dates of the different editions of the AMRs.

Published AMRs

AMR	Publication date
1^st report	14 February 2012
2^nd report	28 November 2012
3^rd report	13 November 2013
4^th report	28 November 2014
5^th report	26 November 2015
6^th report	16 November 2016
7^th report	22 November 2017
8^th report	21 November 2018
9^th report	17 December 2019
10^th report	18 November 2020
11^th report	24 November 2021
12^th report	22 November 2022
13^th report	21 November 2023
14^th report	18 December 2024
15^th report	25 November 2025
Table 4 Source: Eurostat thematic section on MIP

LEGISLATION:

The rules on economic governance (introduced through the Six Pack, the Two Pack (Regulation (EU) No 472/2013 and Regulation (EU) No 473/2013 of 21 May 2013) and the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance) are grounded in the European Semester - the EU's annual cycle of economic policy guidance and surveillance. The fully-fledged mechanism for the prevention and correction of macroeconomic imbalances is made up of 2 regulations:

Regulation (EU) 1176/2011 on the prevention and correction of macroeconomic imbalances; it sets out the procedure and applies to all Member States
Regulation (EU) 1174/2011 on the enforcement and sanctions measures to correct excessive macroeconomic imbalances; it specifies sanctions to enforce MIP recommendations for euro area countries

For more information on the MIP scoreboard, see: Macroeconomic imbalance procedure scoreboard.

Explore further

Database

Macroeconomic imbalance procedure - Statistical annex indicators

Thematic section

Eurostat MIP thematic section

Methodology

Methodological information on the indicators is published on the Eurostat MIP methodology web section and in the respective metadata files:

Current account balance and balance of payments (ESMS metadata file — tipsbp_esms)
International investment position (ESMS metadata file — tipsii_esms)
Real effective exchange rate (ESMS metadata file — tipser10_esms)
Export market shares (ESMS metadata file — tipsbp60_esms)
Unit labour cost and labour productivity (ESMS metadata file — tipslm10_esms)
House price indices (ESMS metadata file — tipsho_esms)
Private sector credit flow (ESMS metadata file — tipspc_esms)
Private sector debt (ESMS metadata file — tipspd_esms)
General government gross debt (ESMS metadata file — tipsgo10_esms)
Quarterly government debt (ESMS metadata file — gov_10q_ggdebt_esms)
Unemployment rate (ESMS metadata file — tipsun20_esms)
Labour force participation rate (ESMS metadata file — tipslm60_esms)
Annual national accounts (ESMS metadata file — na10_esms)
Quarterly national accounts (ESMS metadata file — namq_10_esms)
Statistics on research and development (ESMS metadata file — rd_esms)
International trade in goods (ESMS metadata file — ext_go_esms)
Poverty and social exclusion (ESMS metadata file — tipspo_esms)
Consolidated banking data (ESMS metadata file — tipsbd_esms)
Short-term business statistics (ESMS metadata file — sts_esms)
Harmonised index of consumer prices (ESMS metadata file — prc_hicp_esms)

External links

DG ECFIN dedicated web section: MIP
DG ECFIN dedicated web section: European Semester

Selected datasets

MIP indicators set