The Blue Bond proposal, published in May 2010 (Bruegel Policy Brief 2010/03) suggests that sovereign debt in euro-area countries be split into two parts. The first part, the senior "Blue" tranche of up to 60 percent of GDP, would be pooled among participating countries and jointly and severally...

Europe’s banking system has been in a state of systemic fragility since 2007-08. The current phase is marked by a sequence of interactions between sovereign problems and banking problems, resulting in gradual contagion to more countriesand more asset classes. The banking and sovereign crises...

Without corrective measures, Greek public debt will exceed 190 percent of GDP, instead of peaking at the anyway too-high target ratio of 167 percent of GDP of the March 2012 financial assistance programme. The rise is largely due to a negative feedback loop between high public debt and the...