At three o’clock today all eyes will be turned to the Olympic Aquatics Centre, with Britain willing Tom Daley and Peter Waterfield to synchronised diving victory. Former boy-wonder Daley and Olympic silver medallist Waterfield are a pair with winning past form, coming top in the 10m synchronised dive at the FINA Diving World Series earlier this year. Both men have expressed how much having the nations support has meant to them and how strongly they want to win a medal at their home games.
It’s almost crunch time for the British hopefuls, and it has now emerged that September could be crunch time for the euro-zone crisis. Whilst Daley and Waterfield will be judged on how cleanly they enter the water, discussions continue over how euro-zone members can keep their heads above it.
There have been many pivotal moments since the eruption of the economic crisis in 2010, but reports released yesterday indicate that September 2012 could be make or break for the common currency.
After August, during which month many European policy makers take their holidays, long delayed decisions, long looming deadlines and some crucial events will collide.
On the list of definite issues reaching a climax in September are the anti-bailout Dutch Election vote, the Greek bailout renegotiation, decisions on who should suffer the fallout of state loans to Athens and a German court ruling which could guillotine the new euro-zone rescue fund.
All this will run alongside the pressing concerns of Italy and Spain.
The euro-zones third and fourth largest economies are at risk of becoming perilously submerged, but no definitive measures regarding how to stop them sinking entirely have been decided. It has been intimated that the agreed 100 billion euro banking bailout may no longer be enough for Spain and that if the nation’s borrowing costs continue to escalate a full bailout of 300 billion euro’s (twice the combined bailouts of Ireland, Greece and Portugal) might be asked of the EU and IMF.
EU and ECB officials have pledged to do whatever it takes to protect the common currency and asserted that their efforts will be enough. However, a euro-zone diplomat stated that: ‘In nearly 20 years of dealing with EU issues, I’ve never known a state of affairs like we are in now […]It really is a very, very difficult fix and it’s far from certain that we’ll be able to find the right way out of it.’
Many believe that if the euro is to be saved policy makers will have to take some radical steps in the near future, and it now seems that the ebb and flow of euro-zone concerns will get a serious shake up in September.
