Arguing that no side bears sole blame for the current mess, The Guardian in its editorial of June 30, underlines that the idea of a common European currency was built on a logical flaw, i.e., a monetary union without fiscal and political union. Making matters worse, the euro area was run on an unsustainable economic system, i.e., Germany exporting disproportionately more to southern Europe and the rest of the world, while southern Europe relied on cheap credit, making this a totally unviable arrangement.

Moreover, creditors prescribed Greece a programme that not only failed to make the debt sustainable, but it recreated a poverty long forgotten by Western Europe. “Unless a last minute compromise is found between Greece and its creditors, the only thing that can be hoped for is serious damage limitation”, the editorial argues, and “Europe must stare into this abyss to prevent itself from falling in… Whatever the result of the Greek referendum, Europe must not be allowed to self-destruct,” it concludes.

In Greece crisis: IMF was pushed around by Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy – and now it is being humiliated, (The Independent, July 1), the paper’s deputy business editor Ben Chu argues that the fact Greece officially found itself in “arrears” is not only humiliating for the country, but for the International Monetary Fund as well. “The Greek default is a culmination of a catastrophic chain of misjudgments by the Washington-based Fund, stretching all the way back to May 2010, when it was called in by the Eurozone authorities to participate in a financial rescue for Greece.”