The size of the European sovereign debt dwarfs, that is, is far larger than, that of any other debt crisis.

Judge as of June 2010. The claim says the European sovereign debt at the centre of the crisis (euro-area or troubled peripheral sovereign debt, as framed in context) was larger in absolute size than the debt involved in any earlier debt crisis (e.g. Latin American 1980s, Asian 1997, Russia 1998, Argentina 2001). True: comparable data (nominal or inflation-adjusted totals of the debt at issue) show the European debt was clearly larger than every earlier sovereign/debt crisis. Mostly true: larger than all earlier sovereign debt crises, but the comparison holds only on some reasonable measure (e.g. nominal, not relative to GDP), or another crisis was close in size. Mixed: larger on absolute measures but clearly not on the measure the context implies, or larger than most but not all comparable crises. Mostly false: larger only if a narrow or unusual definition of the debt is used, or a comparable crisis (e.g. the US 2007-08 debt/credit crisis) involved debt of similar or greater size. False: data show one or more earlier debt crises involved clearly larger debt on the measure used.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 International response to European debt problems Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Governor Daniel K. Tarullo, testimony) · 20 May 2010

   “According to the EU, total available support through loans and credit lines, including potential bilateral IMF loans to member countries, could be as large as €750 billion (approximately $900 billion).”

2. E2 International response to European debt problems Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Governor Daniel K. Tarullo, testimony) · 20 May 2010

   “This international financing package is the largest ever extended to a single country and amounts to about 50 percent of Greece's GDP.”

3. E3 Comparing the Latin American and European Debt Crises Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (On the Economy blog) · 26 February 2015

   “Restrepo-Echavarria and Arias noted that these countries, rather than adjusting their borrowing and spending, saw debt increase from 30 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on average in 1979 to nearly 50 percent for larger countries in 1982.”

4. E4 Comparing the Latin American and European Debt Crises Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (On the Economy blog) · 26 February 2015

   “Debt had risen from 90 percent of GDP on average in 2000 to around 200 percent in 2009.”

5. E5 International response to European debt problems Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (testimony of Governor Daniel K. Tarullo) · 20 May 2010

   “This international financing package is the largest ever extended to a single country and amounts to about 50 percent of Greece's GDP.”

6. E6 International response to European debt problems Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (testimony of Governor Daniel K. Tarullo) · 20 May 2010

   “According to the EU, total available support through loans and credit lines, including potential bilateral IMF loans to member countries, could be as large as €750 billion (approximately $900 billion).”

7. E7 Heading into Trouble: A Comparison of the Latin American Crises and the Euro Area's Current Crisis Banco de México (Working Paper 2014-17) · August 2014

   “We compare the experience of Latin American external debt crises, in particular the one in the 80s, with the current European one.”

8. E8 Latin American Debt Crisis of the 1980s - Federal Reserve History Federal Reserve History (Federal Reserve System) · 22 November 2013

   “By 1982, the debt level reached $327 billion (FDIC 1997).”

9. E9 Latin American Debt Crisis of the 1980s - Federal Reserve History Federal Reserve History (Federal Reserve System) · 22 November 2013

   “Between 1989 and 1994, private lenders forgave $61 billion in loans, about one third of the total outstanding debt.”

I could not settle this claim from the evidence given. Two pieces of evidence point toward an unusually large European problem. The EU's support package of up to €750 billion (E1/E6) is larger than the $327 billion of Latin American debt in 1982 (E8), and the Greek package was the largest ever extended to a single country (E2/E5). However, neither figure measures the European sovereign debt itself: one is available lending capacity and the other is a rescue package. No evidence gives totals for the other crises the criteria name, including Asia 1997, Russia 1998, Argentina 2001 and the US 2007-08 credit crisis, and the debt-to-GDP figures (E3, E4) do not compare absolute sizes across crises.