–Says Ireland’s Program Well On Track
BRUSSELS (MNI) – Spain does not need a full government bailout and
markets should allow time for its bank recapitalization plan to work,
European Central Bank Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen said
Tuesday.
“A full program is for countries that have lost market access for
the sovereign,” Asmussen said, taking questions after a speech at the
European Policy Center here. “This is clearly not the case for Spain.”
With the Eurogroup set to approve the Spanish aid program on
Friday, Asmussen said, “We should really make this program work.”
The decision by European finance ministers to give Spain an extra
year to meet its fiscal targets means “this is now a realistic goal that
must be achieved,” he said, welcoming Spain’s announcement last week of
further fiscal reforms as an “important step”.
Spain’s reform package “is clearly the will to stick to the agreed
fiscal targets,” he said.
On Spain’s banking sector, Asmussen said it was too early to give a
clear indication of its true recapitalization needs or which banks might
need to be shut down.
“This is just the starting point of the exercise to have a very
deep analysis of the quality of the assets to really make sure that [we]
know where we stand, what are the recapitalization needs,” he said.
“Maybe some institutions need to be resolved, but it’s clearly too early
to say what will happen to individual banks.”
Asmussen said the rescue program in Ireland was “well on track,”
which he described as good news for the Eurozone. He said the ECB was
likely to consider the issue of promissory notes in the second half of
the year but cautioned against excessive expectations from a meeting
Tuesday between ECB President Mario Draghi and Irish Finance Minister
Michael Noonan.
Asmussen emphasized that there are “clear indications that the
country manages to come along with the existing program.”
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