Brussels, 31/05/2012 (Agence Europe) - Urgent action to hold back any spread of the crisis in the eurozone and encourage growth in the short-term so that people feel their sacrifices were worthwhile and are bearing fruit; extending the ECB's mandate to cover protecting the eurozone's integrity; putting the physical and legal finishing touches to the single market; the importance of private and public investment, suspected of giving rise to deficits in the Maastricht Treaty and Stability and Growth Pact (which has led to a lack of monitoring of private investment); the need to strike a compromise among supporters of integration through the market (the UK and Scandinavia) and the supporters of political and social integration in Europe (France, Germany and others): all these issues were addressed by the Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, in an address to the Brussels Economic Forum on Thursday 31 May 2012.
Tackling the crisis. Europe should speed up the introduction of measures to prevent the spread of problems in the eurozone and to encourage economic growth, failing which public support for austerity will wear thin. The Italian prime minister said that Germany needed to take a long, hard and speedy look at this. He said that alongside some member states' high public debt levels, the other factor encouraging the crisis to spread (and giving rise to the increased gap in interest rates across the eurozone) was the lack of any visible growth strategy which is something to which the general public, economic and financial circles and credit rating agencies are paying increasing attention. Monti added that if the European summit at the end of January 2013 were able to come up with a credible collection of growth stimulus measures, then the markets would very soon realise that there were proper growth prospects, which would immediately reduce interest rates demanded for Italian and other countries' bonds.
The ECB's mandate. Monti said the ECB's mandate should not be changed to include growth stimulus measures. He said such measures would detract from governments' responsibility to introduce the reforms needed to return to growth, because they'd let the ECB stump up the cash. Monti did say, however, that he backed the idea of giving the ECB the job of protecting the integrity of the eurozone (alongside keeping inflation in check). (FG/transl.fl)