FRANKFURT (MNI) – ECB Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny
rejected Thursday the notion that he disagreed with Germany’s positions
on securing the Eurozone’s future stability.

The president of the Austrian National Bank believes “the agreed
steps for [EMU] stability must be implemented in order to thereby secure
a foundation for future growth,” the central bank said in press
statement.

The statement said Nowotny rejected a story in the German daily
Bild, which suggested he had criticized Germany’s insistence on drastic
fiscal cuts in peripheral European countries.

Nowotny also rejected the media’s charaterization of a speech on
Monday in which he compared the Eurozone’s current fiscal policies to
those in the 1920s that sparked the rise of the Nazis.

The central bank explained that Nowotny was contrasting the 1920s
with central banks’ successful efforts to fight the 2007-2008 financial
crisis and not comparing the Depression with the Eurozone’s current
fiscal policies.

— Frankfurt bureau: +49 69 720 142; email: ccermak@marketnews.com

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