EU special summit 2010

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The 2010 EU Special Summit took place from May 7th to 9th, 2010 in Brussels , Belgium . The President of the European Council , Herman Van Rompuy, chaired the meeting . The central themes of the special summit were the Greek sovereign debt crisis and the euro crisis .

Topics and participants

Originally only aid for Greece was to be agreed at the meeting , but immediately before the summit, doubts about Greece and other weak euro members such as Spain and Portugal had led to speculation against the euro in the financial markets . An EU central banker described the situation "suddenly only German government bonds were liquid, not even good French government bonds " and declared: "We had to act - regardless of losses."

European Financial Stabilization Facility

At the same time, a special meeting of the 27 EU finance ministers had been called for May 9, 2010, as the EU heads of state and government wanted to send a signal before the financial markets opened on the following Monday to stop speculation against the euro. The chairman of the Eurogroup , Jean-Claude Juncker , had warned of a "globally organized attack on the euro" that must be dealt with. According to French President Nicolas Sarkozy , the euro zone was experiencing "the worst crisis since its creation". Sarkozy was finally able to reach an agreement with the other summit participants on the establishment of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) with 750 billion euros to stabilize the euro. At the same time, the European Central Bank (ECB) began to buy billions in Greek bonds in violation of valid rules, which led to criticism of the ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet .

Greece

In connection with the discussions on the EFSF, the heads of state and government were also able to come to an understanding on the situation in Greece. It was agreed that Greece should receive loans totaling 110 billion euros over three years, 30 billion from the International Monetary Fund and 80 billion from the other EU countries. Germany's share was 22.4 billion euros. The German Bundestag and the Bundesrat had previously passed the necessary laws in an urgent procedure. At the same time, Greece had to commit to drastic austerity measures. The heads of state and government also discussed lessons from the Greek crisis. In this context, Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded that one should not shy away from changing the EU treaty when reforming the EU budget rules.

Austerity measures

During the summit it became known that the European Commission and the ECB were demanding further austerity measures from Spain and Portugal in order to prevent speculation against these two countries in the financial markets. Jürgen Stark , Chief Economist of the ECB, confirmed that "these countries must do additional work to eliminate the uncertainty and distrust of the markets".

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Pressure from the financial markets welds euro countries together. Summit in Brussels. spiegel.de, May 8, 2010, accessed October 5, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b European central banks buy government bonds. U-turn of the ECB. spiegel.de, May 10, 2016, accessed October 5, 2016 .
  3. ↑ a b Euro summit approves aid worth billions. Financial crisis in Greece. spiegel.de, May 8, 2010, accessed October 5, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Anatomy of a near-crash. Euro crisis. spiegel.de, June 18, 2016, accessed October 5, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Economic experts warn of the euro crash. Budget misery. spiegel.de, May 9, 2010, accessed October 5, 2016 .