It is emblematic of the laxity with which the Stability and Growth Pact was pursued that Greece was able to join the euro through plain fraud, claiming that its deficit ratio was below the 3%-of-GDP threshold when it was, in fact, far above it. In view of Greece’s deceptive behavior, Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, declared that its Greek counterpart and the supreme Greek supervisory authority had “deliberately falsified” the data.