Portugal on Saturday (17 May) became the third European Union country, after Ireland and Spain, to emerge from a financial assistance programme provided by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The country’s budget and economic policies are no longer subject to the detailed scrutiny of the controversial troika – an ad hoc group of officials from the European Commission, European Central Bank and the IMF that was charged with ensuring that the government implemented the austerity policies and structural reforms that were conditions of the €78 billion bail-out given to Portugal in May 2011.

Like Ireland and Spain, Portugal did not request a provisional credit line from its lenders, which would have provided it with a safety net in case it ran into trouble raising money on international markets, but would also have involved policy conditions. Nonetheless, Pedro Passos Coelho, Portugal’s centre-right prime minister since 2011, has undertaken to pursue structural reforms of the economy, despite 15% of the economically active population being unemployed and the government’s popularity in a slump.

Greece and Cyprus are the only two European Union countries that remain subject to an international bail-out programme. The troika has commended Cyprus on its implementation of the terms of its €10bn bail-out from 2013. Loans to Cyprus are being disbursed on a rolling basis subject to its progress in implementing reforms.

Greece poses a greater threat to the eurozone’s fragile economic recovery, and to the countries seeking to navigate a so-called “clean exit” from the bail-out. It has benefited from two bail-outs since 2010 worth €240 billion, while Greece’s economy has shrunk by 25% since 2009. The coalition government in Athens is clinging to a majority of just three in the parliament.

Eurozone leaders are committed to reducing Greece’s budget surplus after it achieved a primary budget surplus in 2013, with negotiations expected to take place in the summer. But all this could be endangered if Greece’s nascent economic recovery stalls and unemployment – currently at 27% – does not fall.