Developing an Effective Crisis Management Framework for the Eurozone

(An excerpt from a forthcoming paper for the European Parliament)

Background

While the discussion of the Eurozone crisis has focused primarily on issues in the sovereign debt market, it is instructive to remember at the outset that this crisis is not primarily a sovereign crisis but one that originated in the private financial sector. As often happens in credit crises, private sector debt is taken on to public balance sheets which makes them fragile and can, as in this case, result in serious dislocations of the sovereign debt market.

Anna Gibson, Research Associate, Re-Define

Development actors have long argued for an overarching international mechanism that would resolve sovereign debt crises in a fair, transparent, and consistent manner. Such a mechanism would assist poor countries that often suffocate under unsustainable levels of (sometimes odious) debt, lacking the political power and legal rights to negotiate with their creditors in an impartial and efficient forum. It would make handling sovereign debt problems less messy, more predictable, and the burden sharing simpler and fairer. It would also provide incentives to curtail irresponsible lending policies on behalf of creditors.