The European Union and seven other countries said in a joint statement on Thursday that Lebanon “faces one of the worst economic crises in modern history” and called for “meaningful reforms.”
“This month marks one year since Lebanon reached a Staff-Level Agreement (SLA) with the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” said the Ambassadors of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the EU in Beirut in a statement.
"The SLA promised over $3 billion in assistance to support Lebanon’s economic recovery. The government pledged to quickly implement a comprehensive package of structural reforms (“prior actions”) in order to reach a formal agreement with the IMF,” they said.
The Ambassadors expressed disappointment that Lebanon’s political actors have made only limited progress in implementing these prior actions.
Lebanon “faces one of the worst economic crises in modern history. People in Lebanon are suffering. Inflation has reached 186%,” said the statement.
“With or without an IMF program, decisive structural reforms are necessary to enable Lebanon’s recovery.”
The Ambassadors called for a renewed and unified sense of urgency to secure the election of a president, and said that the answers to the country’s economic crisis "can only come from within Lebanon and they start with meaningful reforms."
“Now is the time for the Lebanese authorities to seize the opportunity presented by an agreement with the IMF. Otherwise, the economy will deteriorate further, with ever more severe consequences for the Lebanese people,” the statement added.
