David Mayes: Germany and France is to blame for the crisis

In an interview with Norwegian online economic journal e24.no, Prof. David Mayes (University of Auckland) argues that the Euro project was properly constructed, but that the big countries made two important blunders. First, the criteria that a country’s debt could not exceed 60 per cent of its GDP were not properly followed up. Second, Germany and France started to operate with budget deficits, which exceeded the limits in the stability pact from 2000, which led the European Commission to stop its work with establishing sanctioning authorities.