FRANKFURT (MNI) – A debt limit like what currently exists in
Germany is needed at the European level, European Economic and Monetary
Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said in an interview published Tuesday.
The E500 billion in guarantees for troubled European states agreed
by EU countries over the weekend are “neither gifts nor lost money,”
Rehn told German weekly Die Zeit. “On the contrary, that this sum is now
known makes it very unlikely that it will ever be used.”
The rescue plan will help countries counteract speculation, he
underlined. “The signal is: we will not give up the euro. We will defend
it,” he declared.
Rehn proposed introducing “an instrument at the European level that
matches” Germany’s constitutional amendment limiting deficits, “which
should sharply reduce new borrowing.”
Germany’s constitutional amendment, agreed to last year, requires
that the country’s structural deficit not exceed 0.35% of GDP as of the
year 2016.
–Frankfurt bureau; +49-69-720142; frankfurt@marketnews.com
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