Europe (MNN) — Debt crisis in Greece has led to official talks of developing a stricter treaty for the European Union.
According to BBC News, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have come to an agreement that a new treaty must be set in order to avoid any repeats of the Greece financial situation in other nations.
The pair has said that Eurozone states should face greater checks on their budgets and sanctions if they run up deficits. Sarkozy and Merkel propose specifically that the new treaty include automatic sanctions on any nation to run up a deficit of more than 3%.
Paul Jenks with AMG International agrees that something must be done. "Things have to change for them to be able to stay on top of the issue. The European Central Bank really needs to step in, and that is what the treaty negotiation is all about," Jenks explains.
"We want to have an equal Europe–a Europe on the same footing and playing field," Sarkozy is reported as saying.
Jenks says this mentality makes sense. "In decades gone by, when a country would slip into huge debt like Greece has done, they would just devalue their currency. But because they're all using the Euro, they don't have that freedom anymore. So they have to be on the same page fiscally. And if it doesn't happen, a Leman Brothers-type financial crisis for the whole world is not inconceivable."
The restructuring of financial sectors of the EU will, according to The New York Times, lead to the fundamental change of the EU itself, "creating a form of centralized oversight of national budgets."
In any case, the major changes to come will not be easy and will include a number of new measures including heavy taxing, says Jenks. Whether or not leaders will be willing to follow through with the unfavorable measures is yet to be seen.
In Greece, where AMG has several ministry outlets, most notably including their St. Luke's Hospital, Jenks says the crisis has at least seemed to have done some good spiritually.
"It seems that as the people in the streets face these huge financial challenges, it is causing them to look up," says Jenks. People are more responsive than ever to the Christian literature within St. Luke's, to the AMG youth programs in Greece, and to the ministry's bookstores.
Pray that AMG staff would take hold of these opportunities in the years to come. Jenks predicts it will be eight to ten years before Greece is completely back on its feet, a sentence which has put St. Luke's in a severe predicament. (Read more about that here.) In the short-term, the devaluing of the Euro has helped as American funds raised by AMG go a bit further in Greece than they used to. Full recovery will be long term.
The AMG team has chosen to rely on the Lord, believing that if He wants their ministry to continue, it will. Pray that this attitude would continue and would serve to sow more seeds and reap new lives in Christ.
