Resolving the eurozone crisis is one of the greatest challenges facing the global economy. Steady global growth cannot resume until a proper solution is found, as nearly all major economies – the US, China and Brazil – are impacted by failure in the common currency area. But, for the past five years, the euro area has lurched from one disaster to another, amid bitter argument over who is to blame and with reform and key initiatives moving at a snail’s pace.
The latest crisis in Greece is a case in point. The inability to come up with a formula that returns Greece to a sustainable growth path has led to political fallout, with January's Greek presidential election resulting in the radical left-wing Syriza party winning the vote, on a pre-election promise that it would renegotiate the terms of the 2010 bail-out and curtail the country's austerity programme.