MEPs today (13 March) adopted a controversial report highlighting problems with the European Union-led bail-outs of Greece, Portugal, Cyprus and Ireland.

The report, co-drafted by MEPs from the main centre-left and centre-right parties, walks a fine line between criticising the methods and effectiveness of the bail-outs, while recognising that they were conceived in the midst of a grave economic crisis.

In particular, the report “deplores the sometimes overoptimistic assumptions made by the troika” – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – and “regrets” policies requiring countries to make sweeping cuts to healthcare.

“Parliament’s inquiry has uncovered unacceptable complacency, with assistance programmes based on overoptimistic and half-baked forecasts,” said Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian Green MEP. The report also criticises the bail-outs’ lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest that could arise from the participation of EU institutions in the troika.

“When disagreements occurred between the members of the troika, they were solved behind closed doors in the Eurogroup. But the Eurogroup is an informal forum of eurozone finance ministers, which is not accountable to anyone,” said Liêm Hoang Ngoc, a centre-left French MEP who co-drafted the report with centre-right Austrian MEP Othmar Karas.

Yet the report’s conclusions are not as clear as Hoang Ngoc makes out, illustrating the fine line it treads between criticising the troika and recognising the “immense” challenges facing EU member states during the crisis.

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The report underlines that the troika did enjoy “democratic legitimacy” given the oversight of eurozone and EU finance ministers. Some MEPs from the centre-left or from countries that have been implementing EU-mandated austerity policies were keen to condemn the troika in the strongest terms possible.

“The troika must not be made the scapegoat for the problems,” Karas said. He added that the troika “prevented a disaster” but for the future it must be made “better, more transparent and more democratic”. 

But many MEPs from both the centre-left and centre-right sought to remove criticism of the troika that was too damming, conscious that their own parties may have signed-off on the bail-outs when in government.