At Merkel’s behest and with the complicity of the ECB, which waited until July 2012 to quell a bond-market panic sparked by eurozone policymakers’ mistakes, the Commission also imposed eurozone-wide austerity, causing a cumulative loss of nearly 10% of GDP in 2011-13, according to the Commission’s own economic model. By plunging Italy into a deep recession (from which it has yet to recover), austerity sank interim Prime Minister Mario Monti’s broad-based coalition and boosted Beppe Grillo’s anti-establishment, anti-euro Five Star Movement, which finished second in the European Parliament election.