Calls to replace troika with EU body

The three-pronged team of inspectors that presided over the bailouts of euro-area countries, including Greece and Ireland, should be scrapped and replaced with a European Union-based body, EU Economic Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said yesterday.

The ‘troika’, comprising officials from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, has overseen rescue programmes since the start of the debt crisis in 2010.

“The troika should be replaced with a more democratically legitimate and more accountable structure based around European institutions with enhanced parliamentary control,” Mr Moscovici told an audience at the Bruegel policy group in Brussels.