Nations which join the Euro are meant to prove their worth by sticking to rules on the size of their budget deficit and national debt.
But as the BBC’s Ed Butler reports from Athens, it is clear that Greek statistics have been unreliable for years.
So should Greece have been refused entry to the Euro back in 2001? Lesley Curwen talks to one of the Euro’s principal architects, Dr. Otmar Issing, founding member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, who wrote a book about the ‘Birth of the Euro.’
He says the jury is still out on whether Greece should have been allowed to join the single currency. And he warns against any bailout, saying that Greece must undergo economic reforms that bring ‘blood and tears’.
Caught this one on the way home last night from a teaching in a South Carolina parish. The level of corruption in Greece is just mammoth. In their budget, for example, state hosptials were moved off the books.
Greece, like Italy has a barely functioning government which people just ignore; there is massive tax evasion, etc. The country works, like Italy, because people just do their own thing.
It is also a country with unemployment, a history of bad labor relations and active unions, many communist-sympathetic traditionally. After the war it was touch and go whether the country would become communist rather than monarchist. Democracy has only returned after the end of the Colonels Junta with its massive human rights abuses relative recently. Greece also had what has been called the most dangerous terrorist organisation in the world, which turned out to be run by a University professor.
Now we can certainly say: “Greece must undergo economic reforms that bring ‘blood and tears’.” but is Europe prepared to take the consequences?
Greece is also a beautiful country with wonderful people of whom I am very fond, and coming from a highly regulated country with a nanny state, I find the freedom and the chaos refreshing.