The obligations imposed on the four countries (Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Portugal) that had obtained financial support from the EU, the ECB and the IMF have caused serious damage to the economy and social protection, according to the MEPs. Italy too, along with the other states of southern Europe, has paid and still risks paying the price for an ideological vision that does not help growth.
The question does not concern Italy, one could object upon learning that the European Parliament, with a plenary vote in Strasbourg, assessed positively but not too much the intervention of the troika, i.e. of the three subjects (European Union, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) which have lent large amounts of funds to the four countries of the Eurozone (Cyprus, Greece, Ireland and Portugal) which more than the others in recent years have been on the verge of financial apnea.
The intervention of the troika has been useful, basically stated by the 448 votes in favor (against 140 no and 27 abstentions) attributed by the House to the resolution on the investigation that the parliamentary commission for economic and monetary affairs conducted in the four capitals concerned on the effects resulting from those loans in the countries in question, as well as the obligations associated with the transaction.
Useful intervention yes, it is said in the approved resolution, basically because the worst was avoided. "None of the four countries in question ended up in bankruptcy, and therefore it can be said that the troika has achieved the main objective for which it was called into question", underlines Othmar Karas, Austrian MEP of the EPP group, rapporteur of the resolution together with the Frenchman Liem Hoang-Ngoc, from the Socialists and Democrats group. But this same resolution also points out that Cyprus, Greece, Ireland and Portugal have suffered devastating consequences: at the end of the "horse cure", where more or less, employment has collapsed, social protection has been reduced and the level of poverty he grew up. Just to mention a few figures, that of young people in Greece exceeded 50%, in Portugal and Ireland it surpassed the 30% quota, in Cyprus it was just a little below this last level.
If all of this is affirmed in the resolution which can be considered more favorable towards the troika, it seems appropriate to refer also to what is written in the other resolution, presented by the parliamentary commission for employment and social affairs (rapporteur the Spaniard Alejandro Cercas, of the Socialists and Democrats group). This too approved by the House (408 yes, 135 no, 27 abstentions). As if to say that a good number of MEPs have expressed themselves in favor of both one and the other. Which, in a nutshell, means that the European Parliament largely shares the criticisms of the troika's work.
The institutions that have been part of it - this is the recurring refrain in critical assessments - have granted their financial support to states in difficulty conditional on the assumption, by each of the beneficiary countries, of particularly severe obligations (from reducing the number of to cuts in healthcare spending, in the amount of pensions and salaries) which have caused "structural damage" to the economic fabric and the level of social protection.
In short, at this point it is better understood why the austerity-growth dilemma does not concern only those four countries that have requested financial aid from the troika. But it can and should be of interest – and how! – also Italy. Which, like all its Southern European neighbors, has paid and perhaps risks continuing to pay the price for macroeconomic policies inspired by a "rigorist" vision widespread in Northern Europe for cultural and ideological reasons, of course, but also due to concrete interests of the economies of those lands.
