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by beamatronic 4151 days ago
> "continuing to bankroll Greece"

What are the EU treaty obligations in this regard?

Is this still undecided? Is it a "corner case" that was never really spelled out how to handle it?

2 comments

There are no obligations, just necessities. Without the bailout, Greece would have defaulted and (it was feared) the French/German/Spanish banks that had financed the Greek debt would have fallen as well.
It's worse than simply "no obligations". EU and ECB bailouts of EU member states were specifically forbidden under the Treaty of Lisbon http://euwiki.org/TFEU#Article_123 http://euwiki.org/TFEU#Article_125 . Instead, not only did both the EU and the ECB prop up Greece's borrowing, they moved to block Greece's access to a normal IMF program, which would have involved losses for non-IMF creditors.
Treaty obligations doesn't matter when they try to enforce something that is not possible.