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August, reports in the media indicated that, to the contrary, the participation of the private sector had only just reached 70% of the total amount of bonds. Even the Greek banks were reluctant to participate, owing to the losses they would incur in a period of increased instability and reduced revenues. The third factor which had a profoundly negative effect on the implementation of the agreement of 21 July was the confrontation between the government and the representatives of the Troika during negotiations over the quarterly review and subsequent funding in
Since 2010, five Eurozone governments in economic difficulty have received assistance from international lenders on condition that certain policies specified in the Memoranda of Understanding were implemented. How did negotiations take place in this context? What room for manoeuvre did the governments of these countries have? After conditionality, to what extent were governments willing and able to roll back changes imposed on them by the international lenders? Do we find variation across governments, and, if so, why?
This book addresses these questions. It explores the constraints on national executives in the five bailed out countries of the Eurozone during and beyond the crisis (2008–2019).
The book’s principal idea is that, despite international market pressure and creditors’ conditionality, governments had some room for manoeuvre during a bailout and were able to advocate, resist, shape or roll back some of the policies demanded by external actors. Under certain circumstances, domestic actors were also able to exploit the constraint of conditionality to their own advantage. The book additionally shows that after a bailout programme governments could use their discretion to reverse measures in order to attain the greatest benefits at a lower cost. It finally explores the determinants of bargaining leverage – and stresses the importance of credibility.
15 More hitches Anxiety and uncertainty mounted. The Troika report on the sustainability of Greek sovereign debt published in October 2011, conducted as part of the fifth quarterly review on the progress of reforms, did not bode well.1 The report indicated that substantive change in the Greek economy was driven more by the recession than by the structural reforms of the Memorandum. The reforms were not stimulating the internal devaluation they were designed to achieve: ‘The situation in Greece has taken a turn for the worse’. The report indicated that the
15th session of the General Assembly was further complicated by two other issues; the Soviet troika proposal and the campaign to declare a formal end to colonialism. The troika proposal As early as the first week of August, Hammarskjöld had cabled his deputy, Cordier, that: ‘The United Nations cannot stand for an isolated regionalism which goes against the whole of the organisation; regionalism can be accepted as a tool of, and bridge to, universalism but must be resisted by the organisation if it puts itself up against universalism.’108 He was referring to the
Ireland we now have guardianship by a technocratic elite in the form of the IMF–ECB–EU Troika. Rule by the Platonic guardian technocrats of the Troika turns out to be less an alternative to anarcho-neoliberalism than a variation of authoritarian neoliberalism. The rule of the guardians is characterized not by interpellation of their subjects to a new moral order of elevated and elevating ideals, but of conform- CONCLUSION 163 ity to a stern and austere economic materialism and by a cultivated apathy and indifference to feeling, which, according to Adorno and
the beginning of the crisis, many countries have sought to contain the impact of minimum wages on average wage developments and labour costs, especially those where austerity policies were scrutinised by the Troika. However, a significant number of countries have continued to rely on minimum wage increases to conduct their wage policy (ILO, 2015a). The contrasting approaches reflect new momentum in old debates about the role of minimum wages in labour markets, fuelled by evidence of a slowdown in realwage growth, persistent high shares of working poor and long
Introduction The Republic of Ireland was one of the countries worst hit by the global financial crisis and the ensuing Eurozone crisis. It was the first EU country to go into recession and the first to require a bailout, it was effectively under the control of the troika and endured austerity measures for several years. Even though the country officially emerged from bailout conditions at the end of 2013, and recorded the highest rate of growth among EU member states in subsequent years, the social costs still weighed
is able to democratize the EU. It will not hide, as leaders of political parties dominating the European construction hope, the growing and unbearable authoritarianism of their decisions and of the non-elected institutions like the European Commission and the Troika. Our candidacy will strongly criticize the non-democratic nature of these institutions, their mode of nominating, and demand for a democratic rebuilding of the Union, respecting the sovereignty of the peoples and of the European nations. Our
question. Third, there was the issue of UN prestige. As Sture Linner, Head of Civilian Operations in Congo 1960–1961, pointed out, the UN needed a success to ‘blunt the Soviet vendetta against Hammarskjöld’ which had started with the Troika initiative.6 The Soviets continued to loudly criticise Hammarskjöld and the UN action in the Congo, with Pravda even going as far as to denounce the Secretary-General as a ‘butcher’ and a ‘Judas’ in February 1961 following the death of Lumumba.7 Hammarskjöld’s plan for the Congo included reconvening the Parliament, aiding the
constituted late modern statehood.20 Failure in this regard is likely to spawn large-scale protests against what are rightly or wrongly perceived to be the illegitimate and dysfunctional encroachments of the state on the cultural life of the nation or unwarranted interventions in society on the part of the forces of global governance, such as the Troika and the WTO.21 If key state institutions eventually do fail, it will be imperative to develop various approaches to post-statist statehood capable of offering new solutions to questions regarding the re-coupling and