It is customary to call the eurozone those countries that use a single European currency, the euro, instead of the national currency. Cash euro has replaced the monetary units of many European countries since January 2002. Over the past time, the eurozone has expanded significantly, although not all countries in Europe have made the choice in favor of a single currency. Currently, the euro zone is experiencing a serious economic crisis affecting the political and social life of the region.
By mid-2012, the crisis in the eurozone reached a critical point. Experts from the International Monetary Fund note that the region needs to take decisive steps to strengthen the monetary union, which should be supported by a massive restructuring of the economic structure of the euro area.
The attention of observers is still riveted to one of the most problematic points in Europe - Greece. The next postponement received by this country after the recent parliamentary elections does not solve the main debt problems. Greece is sinking deeper into financial problems, unable to repay sovereign debt to partners in the European Union.
Former Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin believes that Greece’s withdrawal from the single currency zone is almost inevitable. The financier devotes no more than a year to this, considering such an outcome an objective consequence of the policy pursued by Athens over the past years. The loss of Greece will automatically exacerbate problems in equally dysfunctional Spain. At the same time, European states are too slow in taking protective measures for the economy, hoping that by the end of 2012 they will only develop a plan to counter the growing crisis.
In Spain, against the backdrop of the banking crisis, a drop in the value of major securities has been observed. Meanwhile, European partners do not allocate stabilization funds directly to the banks of Spain, but to the accounts of the government. This increases government debt, threatening to escalate the banking sector crisis into a sovereign crisis. This situation may well lead to a gradual collapse of the single currency in the eurozone.
The predicted collapse of the euro area will certainly affect other European countries, including Russia, for which many European countries are the main trading partners. The situation in the Old World also depends on individual countries of the Pacific region, whose banks have issued numerous loans to European business partners. This will lead to losses in Asian exports, oriented to the developed countries of the West.
The solution to the eurozone problem should be decisive, long-term, while the interconnections of the pan-European market should not be broken, experts say in their statements.
