After nine years, the curtain falls on Greek bailout drama – but hardship isn’t over yet
Greece reclaims its economic sovereignty next week. But the US$327 billion rescue, the biggest bailout in global financial history, has reduced the nation to a shadow of its former self
After nine crisis-filled years, relentless austerity and four governments, Greece will this week exit its third bailout programme – in a contrast to the economic crisis enveloping Turkey.
On August 20, at midnight, Athens will reclaims its sovereignty, in what the prime minister, Alex Tsipras, has called a transcendent moment for the nation.
“Greece has managed to stand on her feet again,” his office said last week describing receipt of a final €15 billion (US$17 billion) bailout loan as the “last act in the drama”, adding: “Now a new page of progress, justice and growth can be turned.”
The scars of the Hellenic crisis remain deep – weak banks, huge government arrears, almost no space for public spending and, at 180 per cent of GDP, the highest debt load in the EU. But light has begun to emerge.
Greece has been saved in the sense of avoiding the Armageddon of euro exit but how it has been saved is so disadvantageous that one can’t talk of a rescue or exit from crisis
“Without European aid, Greece would have collapsed and been in deep political and economic chaos for decades,” the EU’s economics chief, Pierre Moscovici, opined in a recent opinion column for the German media.