Christa Randzio-Plath Compliance is voluntary and based on peer pressure. The BEPGs must be given the same legislative status as the employment guidelines with formal partici­pation in the decision-making of the Parliament and the Commission in order to reach a common position on macroeconomic decision-making at least between these three EU institutions. It must be stressed at the outset that in the EU and EMU“economic policy coordination” encompasses an entire spectrum of interactions among policy actors, including monetary and fiscal actors. The range of methods used includes directives, community programmes, information exchange, discussion of best practices, policy dialogue, peer review as well as commonly agreed policy rules and objectives and jointly determined actions. Nevertheless the mix of policy instruments is different in each policy field: the single market policy is more based on directives, the research policy on a Community programme, and the social protection policy on the Open Method of Coordination(OMC). Priority should now go to improving the consistency and synergy of the instru­ment mix in each policy field. The OMC has been introduced in 11 policy fields. It is also important to improve the coordination of the policies included in the Lisbon Strategy at both European and national levels. Nevertheless, with the exception of binding rules on deficits, macroeconomic coordination within the euro area is still generally based on dialogue and consensus. Coordination is needed to take account of economic interdependence and direct cross-border spill-over of national polici­es onto neighbouring countries and onto the worldwide economy. Economic coordination and governance is needed more than ever in order to stimulate positive spill-over effects from state to state, from region to region. There are instruments for economic governance like the Stability and Growth Pact, the BEPGs and the Employment Guidelines(EGs). Since 1994 the Maastricht Treaty offers good conditions for economic governance. But the only institutional innovation is the macroeconomic dialogue on the political and technical level(Cologne Summit 1996) which has been from the start a failed opportunity because the monetary policy is the only supranationalised EU policy that does not participate in an ex-ante-coordination. The ECB rejected any progress of governance in order to defend its independence. Too often the Lisbon Strategy has been reduced to“competitiveness” without understanding that deregulation, privatisation and other reforms can only be a successful engine for growth if the macroeconomic, social and employment conditions for dynamic growth are not neglected. Pure supply-side measures of 50