–Adds Comments To Story Sent At 12:08 GMT
BERLIN (MNI) – ECB Governing Council member Axel Weber on Wednesday
urged the German parliament to approve rapidly Germany’s participation
in the EU fiscal rescue package.
“There is no alternative but to come to a vote this week,” Weber
said in a hearing in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament. A
decision on the bill this week has already been priced in by markets, he
reckoned.
“If you should not support the package and not decide on it in the
course of this week, you will have a dramatic market reaction on
Monday,” he warned parliamentarians.
Parliament is set to approve the EU aid bill this Friday.
The Bundesbank president also argued that once the bill has been
passed national governments rather than parliaments should decide on the
eventual distribution of EU loans. Otherwise, “this would create
difficulties on markets,” he warned.
Weber said he was convinced the EU aid package would reassure
markets once it has been approved by national parliaments.
The central banker once again called for more budget consolidation
efforts in the Eurozone “so that we never find ourselves in such a
situation again.”
He reckoned that the window of opportunity to toughen the EU
Stability and Growth Pact had never been so wide as today and urged
member states to make use of the opportunity before it closed.
Still, he acknowledged that the current crisis is due to “long-term
structural problems of a significant size which cannot be solved
quickly.”
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
[TOPICS: M$X$$$,M$G$$$,M$$EC$,MT$$$$,MGX$$$,MFX$$$,M$$CR$]
