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The European debt crisis (often also referred to as the Eurozone crisis or the European sovereign debt crisis) is a multi-year debt crisis that has been taking place in the European Union since the end of 2009. Several eurozone member states (Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Cyprus) were unable to repay or refinance their government debt or to bail out over-indebted banks under their national supervision without the assistance of third parties like other Eurozone countries, the European Central Bank (ECB), or the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The detailed causes of the debt crises varied. In several countries, private debts arising from a property bubble were transferred to sovereign debt as a result of banking system bailouts and government responses to slowing economies post-bubble. The structure of the eurozone as a currency union (i.e., one currency) without fiscal union (e.g., different tax and public pension rules) contributed to the crisis and limited the ability of European leaders to respond. European banks own a significant amount of sovereign debt, such that concerns regarding the solvency of banking systems or sovereigns are negatively reinforcing. As concerns intensified in early 2010 and thereafter, leading European nations implemented a series of financial support measures such as the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and European Stability Mechanism (ESM). The ECB also contributed to solve the crisis by lowering interest rates and providing cheap loans of more than one trillion euro in order to maintain money flows between European banks. On 6 September 2012, the ECB calmed financial markets by announcing free unlimited support for all eurozone countries involved in a sovereign state bailout/precautionary programme from EFSF/ESM, through some yield lowering Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT).〔("Technical features of Outright Monetary Transactions" ), ECB Press Release, 6 September 2012〕 Return to economic growth and improved structural deficits enabled Ireland and Portugal to exit their bailout programmes in July 2014. Greece and Cyprus both managed to partly regain market access in 2014. Their bailout programme is scheduled to end in March 2016. Spain never officially received a bailout programme. Its rescue package from the ESM was earmarked for a bank recapitalization fund and did not include financial support for the government itself. The crisis had significant adverse economic effects and labour market effects, with unemployment rates in Greece and Spain reaching 27%, and was blamed for subdued economic growth, not only for the entire eurozone, but for the entire European Union. As such, it can be argued to have had a major political impact on the ruling governments in 9 out of 19 eurozone countries, contributing to power shifts in Greece, Ireland, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, Slovakia, and the Netherlands. ==Causes== (詳細はglobalisation of finance; easy credit conditions during the 2002–2008 period that encouraged high-risk lending and borrowing practices; the financial crisis of 2007–08; international trade imbalances; real estate bubbles that have since burst; the Great Recession of 2008–2012; fiscal policy choices related to government revenues and expenses; and approaches used by states to bail out troubled banking industries and private bondholders, assuming private debt burdens or socializing losses. In 1992, members of the European Union signed the Maastricht Treaty, under which they pledged to limit their deficit spending and debt levels. However, in the early 2000s, some EU member states were failing to stay within the confines of the Maastricht criteria and turned to securitising future government revenues to reduce their debts and/or deficits, sidestepping best practice and ignoring international standards.〔"(How Europe's Governments have Enronized their debts )," Mark Brown and Alex Chambers, Euromoney, September 2005〕 This allowed the sovereigns to mask their deficit and debt levels through a combination of techniques, including inconsistent accounting, off-balance-sheet transactions, and the use of complex currency and credit derivatives structures.〔 From late 2009 on, after Greece's newly elected government stopped masking its true indebtedness and budget deficit, fears of sovereign defaults in certain European states developed in the public, and the government debt of several states was downgraded. The crisis subsequently spread to Ireland and Portugal, while raising concerns about Italy, Spain, and the European banking system, and more fundamental imbalances within the eurozone".〔Paul Belkin, Martin A. Weiss, Rebecca M. Nelson and Darek E. Mix "The Eurozone Crisis: Overview and Issues For Congress", Congressional Research Service Report R42377, February 29, 2012.〕 The under-reporting was exposed through a revision of the forecast for the 2009 budget deficit from "6–8%" of GDP (no greater than 3% of GDP was a rule of the Maastricht Treaty) to 12.7%, almost immediately after Pasok won the October 2009 national elections. Large upwards revision of budget deficit forecasts due to the international financial crisis were not limited to Greece: for example, in the United States forecast for the 2009 budget deficit was raised from $407 billion projected in the 2009 fiscal year budget, to $1.4 trillion, while in the United Kingdom there was a final forecast more than 4 times higher than the original. In Greece the low ("6–8%") forecast was reported until very late in the year (September 2009), clearly not corresponding to the actual situation. The fact that the Greek debt exceeded $400 billion (over 120% of GDP) and France owned 10% of that debt, struck terror into investors at the word "default". Although market reaction was rather slow—Greek 10-year government bond yield only exceeded 7% in April 2010—they coincided with a large number of negative articles, leading to arguments about the role of international news media and other actors fuelling the crisis. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「European debt crisis」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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