Spain also benefited, in 2012, from considerable financial support to its banking sector. All of these programmes have long since been concluded and the third Greek programme is well on its way. However, they gave rise to consequences so intense in the economic, social, financial and political domains and in the mutual trust among Member States that their effects have not yet dissipated.
In the spring of 2011, Portugal lost access to the markets at sustainable interest rates and had to request external assistance. Consecutive years of economic stagnation or low growth, a severe imbalance in public finances, a high external deficit, a banking system with imbalances, all amplified by the effects of the international financial crisis, made this scenario unavoidable.