VIENNA (MNI) – The aid being extended to fiscally troubled Greece
is not one-off stopgap assistance, European Central Bank Governing
Council member Ewald Nowotny said Friday.
Speaking at the Austrian National Bank, which he heads, Nowotny
said, “Centrally, it is not about putting in place quasi one-time
emergency measures, but to have a sustainable effect. This is exactly
the point upon which discussions between the expert groups from the EU
Commission and the ECB on the one side and the Greek government on the
other are based.”
With respect to the sustainable structural changes being aimed for,
“the first point is to improve the price competitiveness” of Greece, he
said, where price developments “lie high above the EU average.”
Structural reforms should seek further “to increase efficiency in
all areas, including the tax administration,” he continued, while a
third point is that EU structural funds for the production and export
sectors “should be available in a more efficient manner.”
Nowotny asserted that “it is completely clear that we must learn
from these developments” in Greece, “and one of the lessons is certainly
that we should react sooner to developments in the States. That holds
especially true for financial developments in terms of public debt.”
–Frankfurt bureau tel.: +49-69-720142. Email: frankfurt@marketnews.com
[TOPICS: M$X$$$,MT$$$$,M$$EC$,M$$CR$,MGX$$$]
