A series of financial crises in countries using the euro from 2010. In the wake of the Credit Crunch, the world financial markets lost confidence in the creditworthiness of Ireland (2010), Greece (2010), Portugal (2011), Italy (2011), Spain (2012), and Cyprus (2012). A common factor was that all had large public-sector debts. In Ireland and Spain this resulted from a banking crisis following the Credit Crunch, and in Cyprus from its banking sector’s exposure to Greek debt; but in the other countries the main cause was long-standing public-sector deficits that had been fuelled by credit at the low interest rates available to eurozone members. When confidence evaporated, the interest rates at which they could borrow money on world markets to cover their deficits became prohibitively high; in most cases the gap was covered by loans, mainly from the International Monetary Fund and from fellow members of the eurozone. Although initially reluctant, the latter were driven by a fear that one or more of these countries would leave the euro, which would imperil both the project of monetary union and, perhaps, the European Union itself. The lenders demanded economic and structural reforms to guard against the need for future loans. By the mid-2010s the crisis seemed to have been contained. It led to proposals for tighter integration between members of the eurozone, with central supervision of their budgets.

The Eurozone Crisis was preceded by similar crises in Iceland (2008) and Hungary (2009).