One of the consequence of changing accounting standards in both the public and private sectors has been the emergence of a debate over the consistency between these standards and the Eurostat statistical treatment of PPPs.
A logical possibility for "harmonising" accounting and statistical treatments would be for Eurostat to move to a "control" test for the statistical treatment of PPPs. A number of central banks have argued for this change on the grounds that they believe this would increase the transparency of future fiscal commitments by governments.
It is clear that, without a revision of the Maastricht rules and a subsequent major change in the operation of the EDP, such a development would severely limit the growth of the PPP market. It is difficult to see how such a limitation could be justified. In particular, it is unclear why an essentially definitional change should disadvantage PPPs if and when these promote infrastructure investments which are economically justified, affordable and good value for money for the public sector.
In practice, should Eurostat change its rules in favour of a "control" approach, the solution (if worthwhile PPPs are not to be lost) will almost certainly require modification to the EDP. A "carve out" from the application of the EDP for long-term infrastructure investment is one option, albeit one that could be both politically controversial and complex to implement.