International Democracy Watch

With markets gripped by fear of Greece’s economic woes spreading across the eurozone, EU finance ministers are meeting in Brussels to thrash out how they can prevent a run on the single currency.

Diplomats have spent the weekend drafting their masterplan to calm investor fears of Athens defaulting on its sovereign debt. Finance ministers from non-eurozone countries also attended the talks. Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg said: We now see herd behaviours in the market, that are really pack behaviours, wolf pack behaviours and if we will not stop these packs, they will tear, even if it is self-inflicted weakness, they will tear the weaker countries apart.”His Belgian counterpart, Didier Reynders, said the 27-member bloc needed a “real, common” economic policy to avert the risk of a future crisis. The ministers are debating a number of options to halt market jitters. One includes a new IMF-style crisis fund worth 60 billion euros to help struggling economies. Another being considered would see the European Commission borrow from the markets with member states acting as guarantors.

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