The first thing to note is that monetary policy in the United States and Europe since the global financial crisis has been quite similar to the monetary policy pursued by the Bank since the 1990s. That is, central banks responded to the crisis by lowering policy rates as long as there was room for that (Chart 3).
While the government appears to be on track to meet its 2013 primary balance target, Greece still has some way to go to reach the primary surplus targets of 1.5% of GDP in 2014, 3% of GDP in 2015 and 4.5% of GDP in 2016. This means that fiscal consolidation has to continue. Based on current projections, a fiscal gap has emerged for 2014.