The global financial crisis, especially in the newly arrived, so-called post-transition EU countries, has renewed interest in the relevance of Keynes' views on economic policy in general and fiscal policy in particular (especially in relation to budget deficits, public debt and the structure of public spending). Moreover, the sovereign debt crisis that followed the deflationary financial crisis also pointed to a kind of crisis in the institutional framework of the relationship between monetary and fiscal policy. Based on Keynes' insight that lack of demand is a permanent problem in the modern capitalist economy, we agree that Keynes' central policy concern was the maintenance of full employment through the continued expansion of the public sector and related public spending, but not in the sense of (only) short-term fiscal activism. with budget deficits) already an active public spending policy focusing on the investment function of the budget. Recognising that the lack of aggregate demand is an enduring problem in a decentralised, competitive economy, leading to business cycle fluctuations and conceptually expressed by the "savings paradox", the debt paradox and the "composition error". Government debt as an endogenous variable depends on and is determined by the ability of governments to correct market failures through appropriate fiscal policies. Fiscal consolidation should therefore be based on knowledge of the possibilities and shortcomings of the market model and go beyond the characterisation of fiscal policy reduced to short-term fiscal activism. Indeed, in line with the market paradigm, the EU model is based on the dominance of monetary over fiscal policy. The relative growth of public debt and budget deficits in a situation of underemployment will not lead to crowding out of private investment and inflation shocks (neoclassical thesis), and therefore there is a legitimate criticism of strong fiscal consolidations in times of declining economic activity. Some kind of return to Keynesian and Keynesian views of economic policy therefore requires not only a reconceptualisation of economic policy (in the EU), but also a change in the policy paradigms behind today's concepts.