Source: escb and Eurostat, (viewed 27.05.17)

It is visible from the table that the general government debt in the euro area increased by 4.7% of GDP over this period. It was a result of a financial sector support, a moral hazard which Eurozone paid to Greece, costed more than was the cost of reestablishment of the whole Eurozone, and what is more, this debt will never be repaid by Greece, similar to the case of Germany after the WWII, as the US economic support of over $130 billion (current dollar prices), was never paid back by Germany. The fiscal cost of support to the banking sector was partially offset by the dividends, interest and fees paid by banks to the governments in exchange for financial support. However, despite this fact, government donations led to a significant public debt, at the country level, Belgium, Luxemburg, Ireland, and the Netherlands faced a government debt of 6.4%, 6.6%, 6.7%, and 11.3% of GDP, respectively. Moreover, some effects of bank rescue operations have become visible in the broader fiscal risks in the long run. They are implicit and explicit contingent liabilities of the governments, where implicit liabilities accounted for 20% of EU GDP, and explicit amounted to 9.4% of GDP, fortunately only half of the total amounts committed have been successfully used, but the risk of being defaulted is extremely high with such operations, for instance, the government of Ireland took implicit contingent guarantees for 172% of its GDP. The possible explosion of such debt might be painful and destructive not only for the domestic economy.

As we have seen, net fiscal costs for government support to financial institutions were high, but they were a necessary part of European Economic Recovery Plan (EERP), which was signed on the 26^th of November 2008. According to which, a short-term budgetary impulse for demand, reinforcement process of competitiveness and further economic growth were planned to be provided. The total budget of the program was 1.5% of the EU GDP, EUR 200 billion and 170 billion were required from member states, 30 billion euros was taken from European Investment Bank (EIB).The creation of fiscal impulse was divided into three steps:

The change in the cyclical component of the budget within the operation of automatic fiscal stabilizers
An effective use of various discretionary fiscal policy measures and changes in the structural primary balance, which were aimed to create a fiscal stance
Interest payments of the government and other financial institutions became a part of fiscal impulse

The structure how the fiscal impulse mechanism works is visible on the following table. Source: European Commission (own table, built on the basis of European Commission data, available at https://ec.europa.eu/epsc/publications/strategic-notes/towards-positive-euro-area-fiscal-stance_en )