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Open letter: EU leaders’ chance to create good history

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30/06/2015

Published in Financial Times (29th June, 2015)

Sir, We call on European leaders to avoid creating bad history!

Enable Greece to pay the €1.6bn payment to the IMF on June 30. Allow a debt swap with ECB bonds coming due in July and August in exchange for bonds from the bailout fund, with longer maturities and lower interest rates reflecting the lower borrowing costs of the creditors. Then make a fresh start, bearing in mind, first, that the contractionary austerity policy demanded of Greece has been discredited by the IMF’s own research department; and second, that Syriza’s leaders are committed to undertaking far-reaching reforms in the Greek state — if they can get the latitude to do so. 

Prof Joseph Stiglitz Columbia University; Nobel Prize winner of Economics

Prof Thomas Piketty Paris School of Economics

Massimo D’Alema Former Prime Minister of Italy; president of FEPS (Foundation of European Progressive Studies)

Prof Mary Kaldor London School of Economics 

Prof Stephany Griffith-Jones IPD Columbia University

Prof Inge Kaul Hertie School of Governance

Hilary Wainwright Transnational Institute, Amsterdam

Michael Burke Economists Against Austerity

Prof Panicos Demetriades University of Leicester; ex-Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus and former member of the ECB Governing Council

Prof Gustav Horn University of Duisburg-Essen

Prof James Galbraith University of Texas at Austin

Prof Marcus Miller Warwick University

Prof Jose Antonio Ocampo Columbia University

Prof Avinash Persaud Peterson Institute for International Economics

Prof James Putzel London School of Economics

Prof Helmut Reisen German Development Institute

Dr Ernst Stetter Secretary General, FEPS (Foundation of European Progressive Studies)

Prof Frances Stewart University of Oxford

Prof Robert Wade London School of Economics

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