There's a Wasted Opportunity.

Yesterday (30/1/12) European Union (EU) leaders held their first summit since the introduction of December's Europact aimed at solving the Eurozone economic crisis. The thinking behind the scheduling of the summit was that the Greek debt default deal would have been completed. This would have allowed the summit to concentrate on ways to stimulate economic growth. This is particularly relevant to Greece because up until now all their economic reforms and austerity measures have been focused on minimising government expenditure by cutting costs and maximising government revenue by raising taxes in order to pay off the nations debts. With 50% of Greek debt being written off this becomes less of a priority allowing the government to focus it's reforms on restructuring the Greek economy to solve the long term problems that pre-date the debt crisis such as their chronic levels of youth unemployment and youth under employment.

Unfortunately Greece's creditors are still holding up the debt write off meaning that the EU summit was left going over the Europact deal again and again. Being unable to highlight the positive aspects of the plan the Czech Republic got spooked by plans to provide EU oversight for struggling economy's a failed to sign up to the Europact.