Portugal's Finance Minister, Vítor Gaspar, resigned yesterday. He had built the country's political economy and was the person that the troika confided in and dealt with after Portugal asked for a 78-billion euro bailout.
Gaspar conducted the government cutbacks that met internal obstacles, because the Constitucional Court denied the option to reduce civil servant pay and applied a tough austerity policy to other spending.
A sharp student of the EU, Gaspar was not able to carry out the chores that the EU asked him to do. His fall from power coincides with the changing course of EU policies. The EU is starting to grasp that rigorous reforms are not having the intended effects, but instead, are strangling the region's economies.
