Economist
October 20, 2011
The big blanks left in the draft of the euro summit communiqué that was doing the rounds on October 20th said it all. (PDF is here)
Amid the self-congratulatory verbiage about how the euro zone had taken “unprecedented steps to combat the effects of the worldwide financial crisis”, the document was silent on all the most important elements of the much-promised “comprehensive solution” to the euro's debt crisis: how to strengthen monitoring of Greece's derailing adjustment programme; how much of a haircut to impose on private holders of Greek debt; how to boost the power of the bail-out fund to protect Spain and Italy; and how to recapitalise Europe's most fragile banks.
These voids were due to be filled in a weekend marathon of meetings in Brussels. Finance ministers would gather on October 21st and 22nd.. Then the leaders would hold twin summits on October 23rd, first of all the European Union's 27 members, followed by a gathering of the 17 leader of the euro zone. At the end of it all there would be, as Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel promised in Berlin a fortnight earlier, a “global package” that would prove to the world that the euro zone could deal with its problems.
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