The Greek Economic Adjustment Programmes as an Institutional Experiment: Patterns of Enhanced Surveillance

The Greek Economic Adjustment Programmes
as an Institutional Experiment:
Patterns of Enhanced Surveillance

Kosmas Boskovits
Legal Service of the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The ad hoc measures introduced in order to tackle the Greek financial crisis should not be merely taken as the product of necessity. They served as a sort of institutional experiment aiming at testing the reactions to new patterns of economic surveillance in the euro area and to ensuing shifts of power. The formal involvement of the IMF through the Troika format, the recourse to instruments of international law and the conclusion of MoU with the Member State seeking assistance mark a fundamental change as to the rules of the game in the euro area. Under a predominantly intergovernmental scheme, new divisions between the lending Member States and the Member States under enhanced surveillance inform the operation of the rules and procedures set within and outside the framework of the EU Treaties. Faced with the prospect of a genuine economic union, the inescapable question is that of the necessary balances which define a Union of States and citizens.