LONDON (MNI) – The UK’s fiscal consolidation plan is the “right”
thing to do and other European countries should embark on similar paths
and move toward balanced budgets, European Central Bank Governing
Council member Axel Weber told the British Broadcasting Corporation
here.
“Your country (the UK) is on the way to consolidating, I think that
is the right measures taken and other countries around Europe need to do
the same,” Weber told BBC Radio 4 in a program broadcast late Monday.
Weber also said that Europe could help those countries that needed
drastic fiscal consolidation, but warned that “it is absolutely
perfectly legitimate” for there to be conditions attached to any
support.
“Of course, Europe can help them in the transition stage to find
more sustainable public finances in a very conditional way and as a
lender of last resort. It is absolutely perfectly legitimate for a
creditor to attach conditions to the credit,” Weber said.
The interview follows comments made by Weber to the German
parliament’s budget committee last week, in which the Bundesbank chief
said reforms to Eurozone economic governance should allow states to
restructure their debt in an orderly manner, but only in “extreme”
circumstances.
Weber will step down from Bundesbank and the ECB Governing Council
at the end of April. He had been seen as a front runner to succeed
current ECB President Jean Claude Trichet, who will step down later this
year.
-London newsroom: 4420 7862 7492; email: wwilkes@marketnews.com
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