One of the chief problems is giving the social market economy any credibility to begin with. Of course, since the liberals are fine with trading with communists, such a socialist-lite setup must look like nothing to them by comparison.
The EU was just fine with creating this “beneficial crisis” though. Enough people were warning it was coming. Greece, like Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy, had their resistant governments toppled and replaced with politicians willing to take the bailout “loans” even in exchange for the draconian and even immoral terms that came with them.
‘Greece, like Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy, had their resistant governments toppled and replaced with politicians willing to take the bailout “loans” even in exchange for the draconian and even immoral terms that came with them.”
Ireland is a different case from the others. Ireland had a banking liquidity/solvency crisis, after an overheated real estate market crashed.
The others have the usual socialist disease of running out of other people’s money to spend, after decades of establishing overly generous Government handout programs to large swaths of the population, that were never affordable.
Greece was required to stop (slow actually) overspending, as a condition of getting bailout loans when they went broke, and were unable to print more money as they no longer had their own currency since adopting the Euro.
They got sick of living within their means and elected a radical Government to try to make the laws of math go away, and start serving up all those free lunches.
As far as I recall, Iceland did the opposite...they let it all collapse, defaulted on loans, fired all the government workers and started all over again.
After a few months of chaos they got it together ok.