Greece was the first euro area country to experience a severe crisis, which was dealt with three subsequent adjustment programmes and a large financial assistance. Besides the difficult economic and financial conditions, political events prolonged the adjustment and made it costly. In the end, Greece managed to return to financial markets, but the social and political impacts of crisis and of the programmes are profound.
In 2019, Joaquin Almunia (former Vice-President of European Commission) was appointed by the ESM Board of Governors to produce an independent evaluation of the ESM financial assistance to Greece over the 2015-18 period. What are the lessons learned from the Greek experience? How financial assistance to countries experiencing crisis should be provided? How should the cooperation between the country requesting assistance and the EU institutions be designed? And how should we evaluate the success of such programmes?
Chair: Cinzia Alcidi, Director of Research
Presentation: Joaquín Almunia, ESM Independent Evaluator
Discussants
- Jeroen Dijsselbloem, former president of the Eurogroup
- Daniel Gros, Member of the Board and Distinguished Fellow, CEPS
- Minouche Shafik, Director, LSE
