Mon, 01 Apr, 2013 12:15:14 AM FTimes News Desk, April 1  Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen at a press conference after the informal meeting in Lapland Saariselka, Ivalo, Finland on Sunday March 24, 2013. During the meeting in Lapland retreat guests discussed informally the situation in Europe. -Photo Lehtikuva. Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen said the European Union nations must follow the rules, if they wanted to get out of the financial crisis plaguing the region.
In an interview with CNN’s Richard Quest, the premier said the crisis was serving as a “very hard lesson” to many countries inside the 17-nation single-currency union.
“One of the reasons why we are in crisis at the moment is that everybody did not follow strictly the rule base and now we are paying the price,” Katainen told CNN in the interview taken during the meeting in Lapland retreat on March 22 to March 24 and made public on Friday.
Since the eurozone debt crisis began in 2010, five countries – Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Cyprus – have requested bailouts from Europe’s rescue funds.
Katainen, however, said that a raft of new regulations within the next few months would make Europe “much better, safer and sustainable”.
This includes a banking union regulated by the European Central Bank that will become active in 2014 and the euro-wide rescue fund known as the European Stability Mechanism.
Katainen highlighted falling interest rates of government debt for countries such as Ireland and Portugal as a sign that European confidence was returning. He added, “I am a former finance minister and I have learned not to say that we have seen the worst.”
The Finnish prime minister, who in the past had been an outspoken supporter of austerity for countries that spent recklessly, said European nations must restore competitiveness to their economies, said the report.
Link to the original detail report is http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/28/business/katainen-finland-mpe/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1
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