Watershed moment
Over the past few years skeptics at home and abroad have speculated that debt-hit Greece will have to leave the common currency area.
Such gloomy predictions were yesterday debunked in the most official of ways. Euro-exit scenarios are no longer on the cards and the usual doomsayers have mostly fallen silent.
Greece will cautiously return to the international markets and the economy will gradually enter an upswing. To be sure, the vast majority of Greeks have paid a hefty price for this return to normalcy but they can finally say they are seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.
Some of the praise must of course go to Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and his finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, who have stayed the course all this time in the face of outside pressures and justified domestic anger at the austerity policies.
Yesterday’s events could – and in fact should – be seen as marking the beginning of a new era of stability and credibility for the country
