Brussels, 01/09/2011 (Agence Europe) - In his usual broadcast on Wednesday evening, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, has unveiled the Commission's work programme until the end of the year and its plan s to tackle the sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone and to prevent the European economy entering a double-dip. He stressed that there was no miracle solution that could make the crisis vanish, but set out a list of proposals on the table to be passed in the near future and the proposals to be unveiled by the Commission: - finalising agreement on the legislation to change the Stability and Growth Pact (see EUROPE 10442); - endorsing the decisions taken on 21 July by the eurozone summit (on the details of the second Greek bailout and boosting the options available to the EFSF bailout fund); - speeding up the process of putting the European Structural Funds to work through the work of the new task force to this end; - drawing up plans to boost economic governance in Europe; - supplementing financial regulation to ensure the banks take greater responsibility for their action (presentation of a bank crisis management system, derivatives markets' surveillance and changing the insider dealing and market abuse rules).
Reacting to the comments by the director general of the IMF that European banks urgently needed to increase their capital base, Barroso said that they were better capitalised now than six months ago and pointed out that later this month, the Commission will be unveiling plans to tax financial transactions, plans that will be presented to Europe's G20 partners at the G20 summit in Cannes (France) in November. (M.B./transl.fl)