European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has called for countries to be checked more thoroughly before being accepted into the EU currency union. He accused Greece of falsifying information about its economic performance before entering the eurozone, and this nearly brought down the currency union several years ago.
In an interview with German newspaper Bild, he said that the EU could learn from its mistakes. He has also blamed himself for opposing calls to let European statistics services check the data from applicant states.
“We have changed it now, and Eurostat can verify everything in each EU state. Europe can learn from its mistakes”, Juncker said.
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Greece joined the currency union in 2001, however a series of financial crisis in Greece caused turmoil in the Eurozone. In 2010, the European Commission found that Greece had understated the country’s 2009 budget deficit whose indicator was 12.7 per cent rather than 6 per cent.
52.9 billion euros worth of loans were disbursed to Greece from 2010 to 2012, and another 141.8 billion euros in loans from the European Financial Stability Facility from 2012-2015. The Greek government was also forced to implement unpopular austerity reforms.