Since Portugal asked for an inter-national bailout exactly two years ago, Pedro Passos Coelho, the prime minister, has been one of Europe’s staunchest upholders of the faith that austerity will deliver growth – and relatively quickly.
After winning office in June 2011, he said a “rigorous programme of austerity and structural reform” would result in two “terrible years” of deep recession and record unemployment, but would also return the country to growth and win back the confidence of international investors.
His forecast of two years of suffering has proved wholly accurate. But instead of the promised recovery, Portugal faces a much deeper and longer recession than the government or international lenders had foreseen.
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