The Eurozone: The Global Financial Crisis

The Eurozone is facing a serious sovereign debt crisis. Several Eurozone member countries have high, potentially unsustainable levels of public debt. Three—Greece, Ireland, and Portugal—have borrowed money from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to avoid default. With the largest public debt and one of the largest budget deficits in the Eurozone, Greece is at the centre of the crisis. The crisis is a continuing interest to Congress due to the strong economic and political ties between the United States and Europe.

Most citizens of the euro area did not understand what they were losing when the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992, and the euro introduced in 1999. You couldn’t see it until there was a serious recession—when the government really needed to use expansionary

After reading the three main articles, it is evident that different authors have different opinions regarding the European sovereign debt crisis but all of which agree that fundamentally it is due to excessive government debt. This supporting material is no different as it also cites that excessive government debt is the main cause of the crisis. The supporting material below contains segments from a chapter of the book titled, The Real Causes of the Euro Crisis by Thomas Fazi, in the book, The Battle for Europe, published in 2014, pages 61 – 96. The author segments his chapter into different subtopics, which I have covered below and brings to light another cause of the Eurozone crisis that has not been discussed in the previous articles, which is the Eurozone as a tax haven.

The Eurozone crisis is defined as a multi-year debt struggle that began as early as 2009 and originated in several of the Eurozone states. These countries were not able to pay back the debt they continuously built up even with help from institutions such as the European Financial Stability Facility, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. The debt the European Union members acquired were not considered a crisis until after the Great Recession in 2009. This is because some countries released false reports, which soon became discovered, regarding their economic stance. States were able to deceive other nations by inconsistent accounting, off-balance sheet transactions, and the use of complex currency and credit derivatives structures. Greece is considered the main culprit for causing the majority of the debt within the European Union. The Economic and Financial Committee are responsible for receiving and organizing these reports. Fabricated reports were easy for nations to submit due to the established rules set and the organization of the Maastricht Treaty created on February 7, 1992 right before the European Union was established.

One cannot understand the Greek Financial Crises and the general European Financial Crises without understanding the history of the European Union, the creation of the euro, and the Eurozone. The countries involved in the European Financial Crises were Spain, Portugal, Iceland, Ireland and Greece. The Maastricht Treaty created the European Union in 1993. The treaty gave citizenship to all people living in the 28 member countries. This treaty led to the creation of the Euro. In order to join the Eurozone, each member country must maintain sound fiscal policies. Essentially, each country must limit national debt to 60% of gross domestic product and limit annual budget deficits to a maximum of 3% of GDP. The main reason for the greater European Financial Crises and Greece 's crises was the country 's violated the treaty restrictions. Spain, Portugal, Iceland, Ireland and Greece were unable to maintain spending within these limits. Additionally, the European Union has a monetary union but does not have a fiscal union. Each member country maintains its own independent tax and spending policies. The absence of a common fiscal tax for every member country in the EU is the reason for the current crises.

In dealing with current EU hot button topics, solutions are as many and varied as there are countries in the European Union itself. There are many aspects to a countries point of view on such issues including location, history, economy, political outlook, and so on. Because of these influences countries sharing similar histories, locations, economic standings, and etc. band together to create voting blocs in order to get their agendas pushed forward. This paper will discuss the viewpoints of Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania with respect to the refugee crisis and the Eurozone crisis as related by several meetings of representatives from each country. After reading this briefing, Bulgaria citizens should be aware of our country’s feelings

The global financial crisis of 2008-09 that spread contagiously across the globe has particularly hit the European economies hard, accentuating turmoil in the world financial markets and precipitating the European sovereign debt crisis almost instantaneously. This has consequently wiped away all of the EU’s accomplishments in economic growth and job creation (European Commission, 2010a:3). Statistics published subsequently exposed the magnitude of the crisis: real GDP contracted by 4%, unemployment soared at an unprecedented level, public finances deteriorated, and social cohesion in the EU has fragmented (Eurostat, 2010). The crisis has also exposed the fundamental weakness of the Union, especially in the face of new challenges from emerging market competition, an ageing population, and depletion of resources. Therefore, the Europe 2020 strategy adopted by the European Commission in 2010 introduces a new growth model for the EU to respond to the various challenges mentioned above, particularly the global financial crisis. (European Commission, 2010a:5).

The conditions installed by Maastricht (McCormick, J.2011) set the standards for future accessions of countries, so that the Eurozone would be sure not to take on any troubled economies. The conditions were as followed; 1/ The inflation rate of the country must be “no more than the average of the rate in the three countries with the lowest inflation rate.” 2/ the budget deficit must be “ no more than 3 per cent of GDP and its national debt no more than 60 per cent of GDP.” 3/ the country’s long term interest rate was to be “no more than 2 per cent of the average of the rate in the three countries with the lowest rates.” 4/ lastly the country’s currency must not have been “devalued against other member states’ for at least two years prior to monetary union.”

The essay takes into consideration that the EMU is embedded in a generally declining world economy. It illustrates why the EMU did not reach their targeted goals immediately and points out shortcomings in the architecture of the EMU in the Maastricht Treaty that ought to be reformed. It takes the viewpoint that although since the introduction of the Euro there is an apparent recession in the Euro area countries, it is not entirely to be blamed on new currency and that the allegation that the EMU is a disaster is totally

European sovereign-debt crisis is still going on in some countries in eurozone, such as Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal. The origins of these crises started from Greece when the government borrowed a huge amount of money from foreign investors and was unable to repay. As a result, a financial crisis started to hit Greece as the starting point of the crisis over countries in Eurozone. While the old deutschmark (DM) bloc – Germany, France, etc. experience lower than average growth and inflation, the Eurozone experienced the contrary. In general, instead of global factors as the causes of the crisis, the Eurozone itself should hold responsible for the start and spread of the crisis.

The Europe 2020 Strategy strives to achieve smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, as well as greater policy coordination between the EU and its national governments. The financial crisis that had its origins in the US housing market triggered a sovereign debt crisis in Europe, with the risk of contagion to other member states. The Europe 2020 strategy was designed as a way of overcoming the 2008 global financial crisis through economic policy cooperation. It is an improvement and builds on the targets set out in 2000 Lisbon Strategy. Therefore, it is almost impossible to discuss the Europe 2020 strategy without referring to its predecessor.

The terrible internal economies control. The countries in euro area, especially Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain lost their control over the domestic financial situation. Specifically, Greece had long standing financial problems. The government spent largely on the social welfare, and had a great number of public servants who had extremely generous wage and pension benefits. Besides, the government had little control over its budget deficit, leading a long standing financial budget overrun. In Ireland, the estate bubble greatly destroyed government tax income and consumption power of public. Portugal’s lasting recruitment policies led to a great number of redundant public servants. The Italian economy suffered from the high unemployment rate and high tax rate, and had a slow growth in recent years.

The Euro Crisis is the failure of the Euro, the currency that binds all 19 countries of the Eurozone together. The tightly knit nature of this economy means that if even one country’s economy fails, Europe as a whole goes with them. This currency, which was originally created to stimulate economic growth, has become the cause of much accumulated debt.

After the Lisbon treaty was signed, it became noticeable that the Eurozone (which started in Greece) was in a deep financial crisis. The EU has taken a number of different steps to deal with the financial debt crisis throughout the Eurozone. These are the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM). Throughout this essay I will concentrate on the EFSF and the EFSM and if and how the provisions of the Unions treaty were violated by these. I will evaluate different case law throughout recent years to show us the illegality of these, which often violated the treaties of the European Union while also talking a little bit about the ESM, ECB and the IMF. I will also talk about the Greek Bailout and the bail out clause with a small reference to the Pringle case.

At some point a developing country with a growing economy starts to experience a decline. The reasons for it are uncertain. This statement applies to many places in the world. As an example, Russia is currently experiencing major economic decline because of one even that had happened a few years ago. On the other side of the world, Africa, with it’s raised hopes starts to experience a rapid decline in its economy too. Africa’s challenges were not created because of an event, there simply isn’t enough demand for Africa’s commodities. The European economy is growing, however, so slowly that it is almost unnoticeable. The factors that people do notice about Europe are such as growing unemployment rate, falling stock market and lowering oil prices.