Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has thus far set the tone in Europe, wielding the country's overwhelming economic strength and influence to ensure that austerity and budget consolidation dominate as the solution to a debt crisis now three years old.
In a statement on Monday, the finance ministers said that Greece must still put in place a "mechanism'' to ensure that additional austerity measures are "automatically implemented,'' if necessary.
Fiscal policy, for its part, was constrained by large budget deficits and rising stocks of public debt, with many countries even implementing austerity to ensure debt sustainability.
Europe's people must be mobilised to ensure that neither harsh austerity nor anti-migrant racism defines the end years of this decade.
It will be a US-style market in health, and austerity will ensure it will be a two-tier service, with a proper service for those who can afford top-up private insurance, and a basic service for the rest of us.
"SNP MPs will work with our colleagues in Plaid Cymru to help build a progressive alliance at Westminster that will put forward a fairer alternative to austerity and ensure that neither Scotland or Wales can be ignored at Westminster".
Responding, SNP election campaign director Angus Robertson told BBC Wales: "SNP MPs will work with our colleagues in Plaid Cymru to help build a progressive alliance at Westminster that will put forward a fairer alternative to austerity and ensure that neither Scotland or Wales can be ignored at Westminster".
Austerity ensured this bog-standard UK economic recovery was delayed and is weaker than it normally would have been.
When other European countries were being downgraded en masse, Mr Osborne had insisted that his austerity measures would ensure that Britain retained its tip-top credit status, and thus keep borrowing costs down.
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, travelled to Germany to attend the formal opening.France's prime minister, François Fillon, announced a new set of austerity measures to ensure that the country remains on track to meet its deficit-reduction targets.
