The initial blame for the Greek tragedy lay with Germany and France. This was claimed in an article in today's "Il Messaggero" by the former president of the European Commission and former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi, according to which the refusal of Paris and Berlin to accept the Commission's proposals to subject the accounts of all euro countries to constant monitoring was decisive. "The Greek government - writes Prodi - has taken advantage of this lack of surveillance" to fix the accounts and aggravate its budget deficit.
However - insists the former prime minister - "remedying these problems quickly would have been easy", but unfortunately the electoral swings of the German Chancellery made the situation worse and prevented it from being resolved quickly when there was time. Speculation had its day and now the Greek case has become a tragedy. Although necessary, the austerity measures imposed on Greece by the troika risk aggravating the situation because "if the fall of the economy is not halted and growth is not relaunched - concludes Prodi - it will never be possible to remedy the increase in the debt and capital will continue to flee” from Greece.
