The Euro Crisis – Calm before another Storm?

At the beginning of this year the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union started a blog on the Euro Crisis (http://eurocrisis.boellblog.org).  Times were rough.  The euro kept falling on the foreign exchanges, eurozone countries saw their ratings downgraded, the EU summit had failed to impress markets, governments had failed to impress citizens, citizens had turned into índignados, governments had tumbled and the Greeks looked back in anger and found a culprit for their situation: Germany. Many EU and eurozone meetings, demonstrations, harsh words and anti-German cartoons further, things seem to have got back into shallow waters. The second bail-out of Greece has been approved and the European Central Bank avoided the collapse of the European banking system by its second Longer Term Refinancing Operation. However, none of this means that the crisis is over or that the direction chosen to fight it will be continued. Much could depend on the results of the French presidential elections to be held in April and May and the Greek parliamentary elections which will take place around the same time. We have invited two of our bloggers to discuss the current situation and the perspectives: Nikos Chrysoloras, a Greek who ’learned to stop worrying and love Merkel’s policy on Greece’ and Ferdi De Ville, a Belgian who worries about responsibility and solidarity as the Catch-22 of the euro crisis. The bloggers will be joined by Cinzia Alcidi, an Italian who will add her own analyses and observations.

Venue
SOFITEL BRUSSELS EUROPE
 Place Jourdan, 1
1040 BRUSSELS

Speakers
Dr. Nikos Chrysoloras, journalist, currently managing the opinion pages of the Greek newspaper Kathimerini 
Dr. Ferdi De Ville, assistant professor Centre for EU Studies, Department of Political Scxience, Ghent University
Dr. Cinzia Alcidi, LUISS research fellow, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)

Moderator
Claude Weinber,  director Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union,

No admittance without confirmed registration.  E-Mail registration only.