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Saturday 8 February 2014

The Eurozone crisis: An insider’s view from Cyprus


Androulla Kaminara (Academic Visitor, St Antony's College, Oxford)

On the 27th of January Dr Michael Sarris[1] gave a very lucid account into the functioning of the Eurogroup, as was experienced by the Cypriot delegation during the two meetings of March 2013. The first meeting resulted in a decision for a bail-in of Cypriot banks by all depositors and the second decision of bail-in from depositors with deposits of over 100,000 euro.

He highlighted that the current narrative is based on looking only at some of the symptoms of what is wrong with the European construction and not at the underlying problems. He believes that many Member States took seriously the benefits of the Eurozone and less seriously the obligations emanating from being a member. However the Eurozone architectural construction had shortcomings that were not addressed, as for example, the lack of a mechanism to control imbalances, in both surplus and deficit countries. “When we realised that they were a lot of fires burning – we concentrated on rules to avoid new fires from developing, rather than to put out existing fires.” Crisis mismanagement and a faulty decision making process are at the heart of the Eurozone’s continuing troubles.