FRANKFURT (MNI) – The Eurozone must push ahead with further
integration or it will drift apart, European Central Bank Executive
Board member Joerg Asmussen said in an interview with German magazine
Stern released on Wednesday.
“There are only these two options. We cannot afford a permanent
instability,” Asmussen said, noting that the Eurozone was now at
crossroads.
On Tuesday, Asmussen had said that further integration “would imply
that a euro area authority would have competence to limit countries’
ability to issue debt and have intervention rights into national
budgets, and to compel member states to correct their policies, be that
in the fiscal, structural and financial fields.”
“There is a perceived North-South devide that I have not
experienced [to this extend] over the last 10 to 15 years,” Asmussen
said in the magazine interview. “We must quickly move away from that.”
The German Executive Board member called on the German government
to push ahead with its own reforms which are necessary and should help
demonstrate that Germany is not only demanding efforts from others.
Asmussen also warned of new threats to the currency union should
the German Constitutional block the Eurozone’s bailout fund ESM. The
region would “miss a very important crisis fighting instrument,” he
said.
— Frankfurt bureau: +49 69 720 142, email: jtreeck@marketnews.com —
[TOPICS: M$$EC$,M$X$$$,M$XDS$,MT$$$$]
