Klaus Regling: Greece has prospects for greater growth

Next week marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) on 2 February 2012.

The ESM is a child of the euro crisis, it was directly connected to the biggest debt crisis that Greece went through after the war and it reminds the Greeks of the most difficult moments of the last decade.

But it is the European tool with which Greece was saved from bankruptcy. And today, as the head of the ESM, Klaus Regling, says in his interview with "NEA Savvatokyriako", Greece has sound prospects to enter a path of greater growth.

Mr Regling, the ESM was born out of the euro crisis. If you look back at its genesis, how critical was the situation at the beginning of the last decade?

Let me go a little further back to answer your question. In the original institutional architecture of our Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), there was no last resort lender for the eurozone countries. Since a country met the Maastricht criteria and adopted the euro, it was unthinkable to lose access to the markets. What was considered unthinkable happened at the beginning of the last decade. Many eurozone countries could not borrow money in the markets and needed urgent financial assistance. The situation became very serious. The only institution that existed at the time with a mandate to act - the International Monetary Fund - did not have enough reserves to cover the financial needs of the affected countries.

Something had to be done to support these countries. It became necessary to set up a Crisis Fund that would provide urgent funding to its members. Thus, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) was provisionally established in 2010. The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) followed in 2012.

Since 2012, ESM has...