It is customary to call the eurozone those countries that use the single European currency instead of the national currency - the euro. The cash euro has replaced the monetary units of many European countries since January 2002. Over the past time, the eurozone has expanded significantly, although not all European countries have made a choice in favor of a single currency. The euro area is currently experiencing a serious economic crisis affecting the political and social life of the region.
By mid-2012, the crisis in the eurozone had reached a critical point. Experts from the International Monetary Fund note that the region needs to take decisive steps to strengthen the monetary union, which should be supported by a large-scale restructuring of the economic structure of the euro area.
The attention of observers is still riveted on one of the most problematic points in Europe - Greece. Another postponement received by this country after the recent parliamentary elections does not solve the main debt problems. Greece is sinking deeper and deeper into financial problems, unable to extinguish its sovereign debt to its partners in the European Union.
Former Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin believes that Greece's exit from the single currency zone is almost inevitable. The financier gives no more than a year for this, considering such an outcome to be an objective consequence of the policy pursued by Athens over the past years. The loss of Greece will automatically exacerbate problems in an equally dysfunctional Spain. At the same time, European states are too slow to take protective measures for the economy, hoping by the end of 2012 only to develop a plan to counter the growing crisis.
In Spain, against the background of the banking crisis, there is a fall in the value of basic securities. Meanwhile, European partners do not allocate stabilization funds directly to Spanish banks, but to the accounts of the country's government. This increases government debt, threatening the escalation of the banking sector crisis into a sovereign crisis. This situation may well lead to a gradual collapse of the single currency in the euro area.
The projected disintegration of the euro area will certainly affect other European states, including Russia, for which many European countries are the main trading partners. Individual countries of the Pacific region, whose banks have issued numerous loans to European business partners, also depend on the situation in the Old World. This will lead to losses of Asian exports targeted at the developed countries of the West.
The solution to the problem of the eurozone must be decisive, long-term, while the interconnections of the common European market must not be violated, experts say in their statements.
