Mr Soros – who made hundreds of millions in profit by betting on sterling’s ejection from the forerunner to the euro, the Exchange Rate Mechanism on “Black Wednesday” in September 1992 – said the current eurozone crisis is a crisis affecting the very existence of the European Union.
As expectations grow that Greece will default on the onerous repayment deal imposed on it by the EU and International Monetary Fund, Mr Soros said the EU establishment was locked into the status quo when it should be devising and financing a Eurobond to help weaker countries unable to borrow on international markets.
The financier and philanthropist – who is not a Eurosceptic – said there was growing impatience in countries such as Germany where taxpayers and savers believed their hard-earned money was bailing out weaker countries. In reality people in countries like Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal were paying the price to protect and save German and French banks from their mistakes and misjudgement, he said on Radio 4’s Today programme.
Thursday’s financial summit was called by European Council president Herman Van Rompuy to deal with “the financial stability of the euro area as a whole”, Greece’s finances and the so-called stress tests carried out on leading EU banks to assess their solvency.
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned people ahead of the meeting that there could be no “spectacular” knockout blow to the debt crisis to prevent “contagion” to other countries.
“After more than a year of discussing Greece there is currently a great yearning for one finalising, single big step, something ideally that is spectacular. The words being used are clear – a large debt restructuring, euro bonds, a transfer union, and lots more. This creates the impression that everything is going to be OK afterwards, that the issue of Greece and the issue of the euro can be put to one side”, she said.
Such thinking was misplaced, “negligent” and reflected a “lack of patience”. Mrs Merkel said: “If you are going to be politically responsible, and this is what the [German] government wants and takes seriously, you know that such a spectacular, single step cannot responsibly be made… instead, we need a controlled and manageable process of successive steps and measures, a process that has one single purpose, one paramount aim – namely, finally getting the eurozone to the root of this problem. This means reducing debt and improving competitiveness.”
