EU Commission participation in the Troika mission: is there a European Union price to pay?

The European Union completed its first political cycle since the Lisbon Treaty came into force. This gave European citizens the opportunity to vote for the European Parliament elections, whereby they had a say regarding the appointment of Mr. Juncker as the new President of the European Commission. Despite this and other changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, the fact is that the current political cycle of the European Union was less marked by the last Treaty’s amendments, as it has been by the political and economic events that shaped the course of the Euro. Indeed, the Euro crisis has been at the center of European Union politics during the last four years. It was perhaps the most severe crisis during the whole process of European integration (Ash 2012, 11). The article starts by contextualizing the constitution of the Troika in the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis and then proceeds with an analysis of the impact of the Commission’s participation on the balance of power within the EU’s institutions. The second part of the article is devoted to the situation of those countries that were assisted by the Troika, to discuss whether the Commission should have any responsibility for the outcomes of the financial adjustments, taking into account at the same time their readiness for the program’s ideological approach.