Sparring Between the EU and IMF Continues

The former chief of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, has launched the latest salvo in the low-level struggle between European Union officials and the International Monetary Fund over the history of the Greece bailout. Via Reuters: Former European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet accused the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday of rewriting history by ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

The former chief of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, has launched the latest salvo in the low-level struggle between European Union officials and the International Monetary Fund over the history of the Greece bailout. Via Reuters:

The former chief of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, has launched the latest salvo in the low-level struggle between European Union officials and the International Monetary Fund over the history of the Greece bailout. Via Reuters:

Former European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet accused the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday of rewriting history by arguing that Greece should have been made to restructure its debt in a 2010 bailout.

The IMF said in a report this month that it lowered its own standards to join a flawed program for Athens, saying: "An upfront debt restructuring would have been better for Greece although this was not acceptable to the euro partners."

Trichet, who was head of the ECB until late 2011, said the Fund never made such a suggestion at the time and should have taken more account of the need to stabilize the euro zone.

"I have absolutely no recollection that the IMF called for anything that would be stronger … in terms of conditionality or the scheduling," he told Reuters Insider Television in an interview. "It seems to me that there is some kind of reconstruction of what has happened."

Earlier this month, IMF chief Christine Lagarde sought to smooth the waters between the IMF and Brussels:

"The troika relationship has been of a very unusual and exceptional nature, just as the crisis has been," IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said on Friday.

"But it has been of constant cooperation, solid cooperation. I am very happy with the cooperation," she said, adding that she is in weekly contact with the European Commission.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

Tags: EU, IMF

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