–Originally transmitted on Monday at 18:12 ET
FRANKFURT (MNI) – The euro will remain the common currency of
Europe in the future, European Central Bank Governing Council member
Marko Kranjec said Monday in a television interview.
Kranjec, who heads the Bank of Slovenia, said on the Slovenian
national news program Odmevi on station RTV that a return to predecessor
currencies would be bad for any country taking such a step as well as
for the union as a whole.
“I am sure that the euro as a common currency will exist in the
future, and Slovenia has to stay in the Eurozone,” he said. Slovenia’s
predecessor currency, the tolar, “won’t return, and returning to old
currencies would not only be bad for each country that would leave the
Eurozone, but also for the countries which would keep the euro as their
currency.”
The European Union has “survived many crises” and “will survive the
current crisis as well,” he said. The outcome of last week’s summit of
EU leaders was “good,” he said, asserting that the decisions taken
amounted to a “radical” step toward more harmonized public finances,
“which was hard to imagine until now.”
“I’m not surprised that rating agencies are not happy with the
deal, but I wouldn’t grant them such importance,” he said, since ratings
sometimes rely on particularly cautious premises.
“Markets will realize that this deal in Brussels will contribute to
stabilizing and stopping the crisis in the euro area,” he said. However,
he noted, the stabilization of capital markets is a long-term process.
Kranjec urged all Eurozone member states to add to their
constitution an article limiting government debt to 3% of GDP.
In other comments, he conceded that “Slovenia will have lower
economic growth, but so will other European countries. Slovenia is not
in the worst situation.”
— Frankfurt bureau tel.: +49 69 720142. Email: frankfurt@marketnews.com
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