The Greek citizens have made enormous sacrifices over the last years. But we can now safely argue that this effort has started to yield the first results. As far as fiscal adjustment is concerned, we have already managed to cover 2/3 of the course and we now have one of the lowest fiscal deficits in the Eurozone. The necessary measures have already been legislated for the remaining 1/3; they are …Read More

Since 2011, protests spread in Southern Europe and beyond, while trust in representative institutions dropped at minimal levels. Not only the austerity measures adopted to address national financial crises—which had common origins but took different forms—were contested. What emerged, strong and clear, was a criticism of what was considered to be the corruption of the liberal forms of democracy, face to growing evidence of the creation of small cliques of …Read More

The Italian elections have reminded everyone that the economic crisis has made European publics lose faith in the established political process and they’re looking for something ‘new’. They’ve also helped to turn international attention away from Greece. Indeed, with its second bail-out secured and new tranches of the loans being paid, the ‘plan’ for Athens has been updated and her partners pray it is settled. With 2013 as an election …Read More