EU's Juncker looks back on lessons from Greece

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker looked back on six milestones that "shaped the euro and European Union as we know it," making particular reference to Greece and the Greek crisis. 

In a speech titled "Building the euro: moments in time, lessons in history" at the European Central Bank Forum in Portugal marking 20 years of the Economic and Monetary Union, Juncker went back to the start of the Greek crisis in 2009, when "the government admitted that official statistics had misrepresented the real debt and deficit figures for years," revealing "one of the biggest contradictions and absurdities of Europe's Economic and Monetary Union."
"Member-states had been resisting tighter EU rules on statistics for years, prime ministers, finance ministers, governments, arguing that national sovereignty was more important than trustworthy and comparable data."