Athens
Greece cheated on its entrance examination to join the euro common currency in 2001, the government admitted this week. The Greek conservative government said that the Socialist government that was in power at the time deliberately fudged the numbers, to make Greece’s forecasted budget deficit look smaller. As the financial health of one eurozone country affects all the others, euro users are supposed to adhere to strict economic policies, which include keeping budget deficits low. The rest of the union will decide in December whether to punish Greece, but since France and Germany have also run up big deficits since the adoption of the euro, they are hardly in a position to be stern.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Garsington Opera opens its summer festival with two 'very different productions'The Week Recommends A 'fabulous' new staging of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and Donizetti's fake-love-potion comedy L'elisir d'amore
-
The Rehearsal series two: Nathan Fielder's docu-comedy is 'laugh-out-loud funny'The Week Recommends Television's 'great illusionist' has turned his attention to commercial airline safety
-
The Ballad of Wallis Island: bittersweet British comedy is a 'delight'The Week Recommends A reclusive millionaire lures his favourite folk duo to an island for an 'awkward reunion'
