The troika of international creditors, the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and European Central Bank, in 2010, provided financial support for countries suffering after the global financial crisis on the condition that they would introduce some austerity measures. Five years later, Greek economy is still fragile and the country’s government is not allowed to carry out its own policy. German journalist Harald Schumann decided to clear up the situation in the In the Now program.
Some countries, especially those which followed the troika’s program, think that here has been no recovery at all, the presenter noted. The creditors were supposed to support the economy but they only destroy it.
“These three institutions were commissioned by the finance ministers of the eurogroup, which are the countries of the European Union who have the euro as their common currency, with the task to control that the crisis countries which are Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus, and Greece fulfill a program which has been constructed and formulated by these three institutions. This program is designed to make these countries pay the debts and it follows very outdated politically-economic concept meaning that you can consolidate the balance sheet of the indebted economy simply by cutting expenses and by increasing taxes. But this is a completely wrong concept because it cannot work,” Schumann said.
The possibility that Greece may exit the eurozone is discussed rather often. But Brussels and Berlin will hardly let that happen.
“What I see is that the creditor countries, namely Germany, and also the creditor institutions, the Commission and IMF, demand from Greek government to continue with the policy which has been imposed on Greece 5 years ago and did not work and did destroy the Greek economy. And of course, this new government has been elected to finish with this old concept and to try new ways. So, that’s the reason why there is such a deadlock. I would have expected that a compromise is possible, but it seems that the other eurozone governments do not want to have a left wing government inside the Eurozone being successful in finding new ways and in stopping these austerity policies. Because probably this would be an example for all the others,” concluded Schumann.
