Joao Vale de Almeida, the European Union’s ambassador to the United States, will discuss the ongoing European sovereign debt crisis when he speaks at the University of Iowa College of Law on Wednesday, March 28.

Vale de Almeida’s speech, “The State of the EU,” will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the Levitt Auditorium of the Boyd Law Building. Admission is free and open to the public.

“The European sovereign debt crisis is one of the most significant economic events of our time and has called into question the viability of the Euro and theEurozone,” says EnriqueCarrasco, professor of the law and director of the UI Center for International Finance and Development that is hosting the lecture. “The decisions made today will have impacts generations from now, both in Europe and all around the world.”

The crisis has exposed a major flaw of the European Monetary Union, Carrasco says. Lax fiscal rules allowed several European countries to amass massive, unsustainable public debt and no ability to pay it back, requiring crisis intervention by Eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund. Austerity measures have caused economic stagnation and high unemployment in countries like Ireland, Italy, and Spain. The most significant problems are in Greece, where third party debt refinancing is the only thing keeping the government from defaulting on its loans, and which recently reached agreement with its private bondholders to re-pay its debt for just pennies on the dollar.

Carrasco says a deepening of the crisis could imperil the fragile recovery of the global economy.

More information about Vale de Almeida is available at www.eurunion.org/eu/Ambassadors-Corner/Ambassador-Joao-Vale-de-Almeida-Biography.html.