EU ministers have agreed to create a €54 billion (£46bn) fund, financed by the banking industry, to respond to future crises of failing eurozone banks.
One of the most worrying aspects of the Eurozone crisis has been its effect on democracy. Sonia Alonso argues that while the crisis has weakened democracy in several countries, particularly with regard to the implementation of austerity policies against public opposition, this should not be understood as the imposition of technocratic policymaking from Brussels. She writes that national governments have a tendency to downplay their responsibility for European decisions, with national actors in both core and periphery Eurozone members having more scope to shape policy-making than they present to their electorates.
Creating a common currency area means replacing indifference by cooperation and conflict. In this sense the Eurozone crisis might not be a deadly challenge to the whole European construct, but rather become a further step towards a European society.
Eurozone finance ministers and the IMF have agreed a €10 billion bailout deal for Cyprus to keep the country in the Eurozone and to prevent its banking system collapsing.
EU accession in 2004 did little if anything to make runaway bankers accountable; on the contrary, the so-called institutional ‘independence’ of the Central Bank making the Governor accountable to the ECB made the bankers more unaccountable.