Hope rests on ESM

The Finance ministers of the Eurozone states agreed on a treaty establishing the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM) late on Monday evening. The bailout fund is to succeed the temporary European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in July 2012 and make 500 billion euros available to indebted Eurozone countries. The ESM is a decisive step towards emerging from the crisis, the business paper Il Sole 24 Ore concludes: "The EFSF has a fundamental flaw that can only be corrected by the new ESM. The loans that are made available to debt-stricken countries place a burden on the budgets of individual countries. ... The distribution reflects the loan guarantees given. The ESM on the other hand is a financial institution endowed with capital that is collected from each of the states of the Eurozone. Moreover the statute foresees that the ESM will be able to guarantee the bonds issued by the funds itself. This formula could relieve struggling countries of the burden of the already issued EFSF bonds."

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