“Greek financial audits, 2009–10”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Against this backdrop, a 2004 external audit exposed creative accounting practices understating the problem, putting the EU authorities on alert thereafter. In 2009, the Greek government-debt crisis developed, and the EU authorities suspected again a lack of credibility in its book keeping, hence the audits.^[1]

This caused political and financial market turmoil. For instance, it reignited a controversy about Greece's off-market swaps contracted with Goldman Sachs in 2001.^[2] The accounts for the period 2006–2009, including debt and deficits levels, were regularized. The lasting effects were institutional changes in Greece and at the EU level in the area of fiscal data.^[3] There remains, nonetheless, an ongoing controversy about methodological issued that affected the extent of revisions.^[4]^[5]^[6]

Inside the reports

As part of an excessive deficit procedure (EDP), the Greek authorities submitted to Eurostat, in October 2009, unusually high upward revisions of the deficit and debt data for the period 2005–2008. ECOFIN commissioned an audit, known as an 'EDP methodological visit'. It began in November 2009, and its results were published in a report dated 8 January 2010.^[7]

According to this report, Eurostat could not validate Greece's fiscal data, exposing Greece's sub par statistical ability and accountability, relative to other member states. This came despite a reinforced EU legal framework for fiscal data following the episode of the 2004 Greek financial audit. At the request of ECOFIN, Eurostat followed up with a series of EDP methodological visits during 2010, in cooperation with the Greek authorities. As part of this initiative, the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) was established as an independent authority subject to the control of the Greek Parliament. EDP notification tables are required to be published in April and October by each member state.^[8]

In the case of Greece, the April 2010 notification contained revised fiscal data for 2006–2009, but with remaining reservations in these areas: statistical classification of public corporations, off-market swaps, social security funds, unaudited budget amounts and payables. These were addressed in the October 2010 EDP notification, a significant revision. However, residual uncertainties, notably for the year 2009, called for another visit, known as "extended". Its outcome is the November 2010 EDP notification (outside the statutory schedule), which is published in a comprehensive report concluding that "revised data for 2006-2009 are sufficiently reliable for EDP purposes".^[9] An accompanying information note^[10] was published around the same time.

The methodology of revisions, according to which the cost of aforementioned previous actions such as cross currency swaps, was retroactively added to the 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 budget deficits^[11]^[12], along with the deficits of several legal entities from the non-financial corporations in the General Government sector, has led to a certain controversy, with the former head of Greece's statistical agency being accused of inflating these years' budget deficits ^[11]^[12]. Nonetheless, the combined corrections lead to an increase of the Greek debt by about 10% (see below).

We use the convention that a positive deficit means a negative government balance, and conversely{{#tag:ref|Take, for example, the information note.^[10] In the second table under "1. Overview of the latest revisions", the figure for "Balance sheet corrections" and "change in deficit" is -370. This corresponds, in fact, to "an addition of EUR 370 million to the 2009 deficit". Using our convention, this would be recorded as +370, not -370.| group="Note"}} The following abbreviations (shown in parenthesis) are used: local government (LG) and central government (CG) and social security funds (SSF){{#tag:ref|These abbreviations can be found in Eurostat publications |group="Note"}}. These add up to a total known as "General government". We use the convention that 1,000.1 means one thousand and one tenth{{#tag:ref|Eurostat sometimes uses 1.000,1 to represent 1,000.1, such as in page 18 of the report^[9] |group="Note"}}.

The variation in the published values of general government debt (the total), between the April and the November EDP notifications, is entirely attributable to CG. Hence only the breakdown for the deficit is reproduced below.

Notes

1. ^¹{{cite news |title=EU casts doubt on Greece economic figures |url=http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-24/greece-failed-to-notify-eu-of-2001-swap-contract-eurostat-says.html |agency=BBC News|newspaper=Business Week |date=13 January 2010}}{{dead link|date=May 2012}}
2. ^{{cite news |title=Greece failed to notify EU of 2001 swap Contract, Eurostat says |url=http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-24/greece-failed-to-notify-eu-of-2001-swap-contract-eurostat-says.html |agency=Bloomberg |newspaper=Business Week |date=24 February 2010}}{{dead link|date=May 2012}}
3. ^{{cite web |url=http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=CRE&reference=20100615&secondRef=ITEM-006&language=EN |title=Quality of statistical data in the Union and enhanced auditing powers by the Commission (Eurostat) |date=15 June 2010 |publisher= EU Parliament |location=Strasbourg}}
4. ^{{Cite news| title = Greece's statistics chief faces charges over claims of inflated 2009 deficit figure| url = http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_22/01/2013_479717 |work= Kathimerini | date = 22 January 2013| accessdate= 6 January 2014}}
5. ^{{Cite news| title = Eurostat’s failures greatly increase the size of Greece’s debt | url = http://www.neurope.eu/article/eurostat%E2%80%99s-failures-greatly-increase-size-greece%E2%80%99s-debt |work= New Europe | date = 10 November 2013 | accessdate= 6 January 2014}}
6. ^{{Cite news| title = Eurostat’s crafty ways of collaboration with governmental officials to swell Greece’s public deficit and debt for the period 2005-2009| url = http://www.neurope.eu/article/eurostat%E2%80%99s-crafty-ways-collaboration-governmental-officials-swell-greece%E2%80%99s-public-deficit |work= New Europe | date = 15 December 2013 | accessdate= 6 January 2014}}
7. ^{{cite web |url=https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:KfuYEIIDHnMJ:eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do%3Furi%3DSPLIT_COM:2010:0001%2801%29:FIN:EN:PDF+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESg-AASJuIUWS4skiAZfDqcnMb-YDdC8OkSRUjwOgs2I0-F9zSdJqcy-yV-MW83rAP8pjk4UH77jyLLxv5hw5kTzQLzUHlJlldHVGINUpBC230600ohVl5G2hOp03dx91MZdurZ8&sig=AHIEtbQ0bQXSQXCI8rd2Yvd1GIM5XFhgiw |title= Report on Greek government deficit and debt statistics |first= |last= |author= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= 8 January 2010 |month= |year= |work= |publisher= European Commission|location= |page= |pages= |at= |language= |trans-title=|arxiv= |asin= |bibcode= |doi= |doibroken= |isbn= |issn= |jfm= |jstor= |lccn= |mr= |oclc= |ol= |osti= |pmc = |pmid= |rfc= |ssrn= |zbl= |id= |deadurl= |accessdate= |quote= |ref= |separator= |postscript=}}
8. ^{{cite web |url=http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/government_finance_statistics/excessive_deficit/edp_notification_tables |title= EDP notification tables |first= |last= |author= |authorlink= |coauthors= |date= |month= |year= |work= |publisher= Eurostat|location= |page= |pages= |at= |language= |trans-title=|arxiv= |asin= |bibcode= |doi= |doibroken= |isbn= |issn= |jfm= |jstor= |lccn= |mr= |oclc= |ol= |osti= |pmc = |pmid= |rfc= |ssrn= |zbl= |id= |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20121011012622/http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/government_finance_statistics/excessive_deficit/edp_notification_tables|archivedate=2012-10-11|deadurl=yes|accessdate= |quote= |ref= |separator= |postscript=}}
9. ^¹²³⁴{{cite web |url=https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:AmRW-cKR4oQJ:epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/government_finance_statistics/documents/Greece%2520-%25202010%2520methodological%2520visits%2520report.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESghn89p-eFk8e3a1--CEuYTGRuvrJyieC4B_uDB9Hv685ND9doNJHsJDcIRRfZHKU9vSpk91OLKFB42Ju_4FHXCiQ1UJ1Nfh7Z_XA-6rvKfckjYCl9UX2NGPRrh6rgeH9K8ZqIJ&sig=AHIEtbT7cwBNX6JvbYndCUyHNv8oXpNh2A |title= Report on the EDP methodological visit to Greece in 2010 |date=November 2010 |publisher= Eurostat}}
10. ^¹²{{cite web |url=https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:O-GIiPa8l30J:epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/government_finance_statistics/documents/Report_EDP%2520GR%2520-%2520final.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESga5sviTvSSjfpSpeUqHLT10aoTXesiFFlQXFCQ0A9vW6LrL7jEUc_C2AyvnmfEAPnh9TClyEn98EKu1-5ucbD030_yLrx7nYqYqojpVg0iO6ilAEKsElw3jMN5DgLy-8rwerzX&sig=AHIEtbS_Fe3sxiVDUnDVwCdpyLmcGF2cuQ&pli=1 |title= Information note on Greek fiscal data |date= 15 November 2010 |publisher= Eurostat}}
11. ^¹{{cite news |url=https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/30/the-road-to-the-greek-hell-is-paved-with-false-eu-and-imf-statistics/| title= The Road to the Greek Hell is Paved with False EU and IMF Statistics|work= Counterpunch|date= 30 August 2017 |accessdate= 30 August 2017 }}
12. ^¹{{cite news |url= https://www.mintpressnews.com/trials-andreas-georgiou-fraud-drove-greece-austerity/235102/| title= the Trials of Andreas Georgiou and the Fraud That Drove Greece into Austerity|work= Mintpressnews= 4 December 2017 |accessdate= 30 August 2017 }}

Inside the reports

Notes

References

External links