The director of the European Policy Centre said today that Portugal’s bailout programme was absolutely necessary, but that the country had suffered from the inexperience of the European institutions that funded the rescue package - the Troika.
Fabian Zuleeg sees the Portuguese case as a successful one as it approaches the end of the Troika involvement and its return to the international funding markets, but that the price paid in social terms has been very heavy and the damage will remain.
The German said that not everything had been done right, and that the austerity measures were very severe but whatever the regime, inside or outside the euro, they would have had to be severe.
"In the long run it seems to me that the essential question is whether the Portuguese people see this intervention as a necessary evil, caused by domestic policy mistakes, or whether they see it as an imposition by northern European countries motivated by an agenda that prioritised austerity," continued Zuleeg who considers that Portugal benefitted from being seen as ‘a good student’ by its international partners but that support programmes need to be redesigned for the future and need to be "much more flexible" to enable countries to "continue to make public and social investment.”
The director of the Centre for European Policy said that in the bailout years "mistakes were inevitable" "We must recognise that no one knew how to do this, neither the countries nor the Troika," ending a convent summary from Brussels - convenient as it is far too late to do anything about Zuleeg’s observations.
