On Thursday, incumbent teacher’s pet Cyprus got its hands on €100m of ESM cash, and we detected a hint of a message to the Greek government in the quote provided from ESM managing director Klaus Regling.
After the usual listing of the reforms that made the disbursement possible, Regling — while possibly tilting his eyes in the direction of Athens — added: “Progress in Cyprus confirms that with strong ownership by a government our approach to grant a loan in exchange for economic policy conditions works. This has also been demonstrated by the successful programme conclusions in Ireland, Portugal and Spain.”
Ouch. Exclusion is the worst form of flattery.
But with Greece’s future never less clear, it was certainly good to hear things are going right for at least one European country still in an assistance programme.
And the intrepid reporters at Blog are more than willing to take a few weeks during the summer to investigate the Cypriot recovery first hand.
