Interactive: An austere trip through Europe

Learn about the state of the eurozone’s fragile economies.

AUSTERITY interactive

With swelling unemployment, tottering banks and faltering growth, the eurozone is not a healthy patient.

The 17 countries that use the currency suffer from different ailments: collapsed housing bubbles in Spain and Ireland, overly high deficits in Greece, and exposure to toxic Greek debt just about everywhere. But the treatments put in place have been the same: cut spending and raise taxes.

Portugal is selling off state-owned companies. Belgium is reforming its pension system. Greece is slashing the minimum wage and levying new taxes. Even Finland, which has a relatively low national debt, turned down building a Guggenheim museum in Helsinki because it would have cost too much.

Austerity measures tend to be quite unpopular with the public, and in September massive, occasionally violent protests erupted against new rounds of austerity measures in Spain, Portugal, and Greece.

Click on the country names below to let Al Jazeera take you on an austere journey through the eurozone.

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Source: Al Jazeera