Time for EU to work without IMF help

Published on 2 August 2013 at 11:52

“Time for Europe to shoulder burden of its own problems” writes the Financial Times in an editorial following the publication of a report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on July 31 which warned that Greece was facing a financial shortfall after July 2014 and that the Fund would not fulfill its pledge to contibute to an aid programme scheduled for November-December this year.

The IMF assisted in the bailout not for financial reasons but due to its “expertise and proven ability to discipline the recipients of its credit” should they fail to comply with austerity pledges, writes the FT. However, the EU and IMF have struggled to work together and the result has been a lack of focus on how to solve the country’s financial woes, continues the daily, adding that “emerging powers’ growing unease about IMF exposure” has made matters worse.

The paper continues –

Greece, the rest of the Eurozone, and the IMF would all be better off if the uncertainty were removed once and for all. Europe could do this by buying the fund out: first, by stepping into the IMF’s share of future disbursements, then gradually, by taking over its outstanding exposure at par. If Eurozone leaders asserting that the programme is working are to be taken at their word, this would not expose their taxpayers to any new risks. That by itself will not fix things. [...] But freeing the IMF from its dead marriage with Europe will make it easier for it to tell the truth as it sees it, and harder for the Eurozone to ignore its own policy failures.

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