BRUSSELS (MNI) — The European Commission is happy to see the
European Central Bank rise to the challenges facing Europe and totally
respects the central bank’s independence, Commission President Jose
Manuel Barroso said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Brussels on
Monday.
Barroso was speaking after European Union finance ministers agreed
a bailout fund worth at least E720 billion at a meeting late Sunday to
try to stop market participants from targeting heavily indebted members
of the currency bloc. In tandem, the ECB said it would begin buying
government bonds on the secondary markets and would reopen dollar
denominated foreign exchange swap lines with other major central banks.
“I very much respect the independence of the ECB,” Barroso told
Bloomberg TV. “I totally welcome the announcement of the ECB, I am
confident in the ECB and I am happy” to see it rising to the challenge,
he said.
The ECB’s unprecedented actions could be seen as an infringement of
its independence because last Thursday ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet
shied away from the idea of buying government bonds.
Barroso said that no Eurozone country had asked for support from
the newly created fund and that no member state wanted to leave the
Euro.
“No one has asked for support, so let’s not anticipate scenarios,”
he said. “The reality is that no country is leaving the euro,” he said,
“We have no one wanting to leave.”
Barroso said the crisis had highlighted the “structural
differences” between the member states that share the single currency.
Now, he said, there is a “much stronger determination of the member
states to support the Stability and Growth pact, that was not always the
case.”
The Stability and Growth Pact requires EU member states to limit
their budget deficits to 3% of GDP and government debt to 60%.
–Brussels: 0032 487 (0) 32 803 665, echarlton@marketnews.com
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