Robert Chote told the Guardian that a British recession caused by Greece leaving the single currency might mean “you go down and you never quite get back to where you started”.
His comments followed a stark warning by Chancellor George Osborne, who told the annual meeting of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development that the crisis in the eurozone could undo the work of the last 20 years in constructing stable economies in Europe.
“As the storms of the eurozone crisis gather, there is a risk that some of the good work of the last 20 years in building a stable financial sector and creating jobs and prosperity is unwound”, Osborne said.
“Like the UK, the region’s growth prospects are closely tied to those of the euro area, and deleveraging magnifies this effect.”
A senior Brussels official also claimed that the European Union is working on a plan for Greece to exit the euro, warning that the single currency will have to fight a “cataclysm” in order to survive.
”A year and a half ago there may have been the danger of a domino effect. But today there are, both within the European Central Bank and the European Commission, services that are working on emergency scenarios in case Greece doesn’t make it”, Karel De Gucht told De Standaard.
The EU’s Belgian trade commissioner added: “All you can do is have your central bank to print money, and then you get hyperinflation. That would cause a cataclysm in other countries that are now under pressure”.
MOL/HE
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