Financial Times
November 22, 2011
In public finances as in football, each European country fields its own team. In the past year, the lack of unity has been keenly felt, with the escalating debt crisis exacerbated by rivalries and disputes between Treasury departments. Little wonder the rest of the world asks who is playing on which side.
In the sixth ranking of European Union finance ministers, the Financial Times attempted to select a player of the year from the bloc’s 19 main economies. We looked at how on the ball each minister was and whether they were team players; we counted their own goals, set them targets for economic performance and measured the response to them from that toughest of crowds – the capital markets. With the continent on the brink of recession, its banks weakened, bond markets in turmoil and investors questioning the euro’s survival, the pressure could hardly have been greater.
Commentators have had plenty to criticise. “Sensible solutions to the eurozone debt crisis were repeatedly thwarted by parochial and procrastinating politics,” says Sony Kapoor, head of Re-Define, an economic consultancy, and one of the seven-strong jury who ranked ministers’ political skills. The candidates “were collectively negligent in allowing a tractable crisis to spiral out of control”.
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