Strasbourg, 25/01/2001 (Agence Europe) - Adopting the report by the Swiss Liberal Claude Frey, the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly invited the countries of the Euro zone to better communicate with the markets and people, to show a desire to strengthen economic and political integration, and to intensify cooperation with the EU accession candidate countries, by studying the situation of their debt in view of the conversion of a significant part of their external debt into Euro.
This report was adopted following the debate on "The Euro and Greater Europe" to which took part the President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Wim Duisenberg, who asserts that the ECB and the national central banks of the Eurosystem "are closely interested in the development in the candidate countries" (he recalled the seminar last December in Vienna, where continued the dialogue started at high-level with the President of the central banks of these countries). Furthermore, Mr Duisenberg felt that "the long-term success of the Euro also depends upon constitutional developments, in the wider sense", of the EU, while noting that "sadly, the notion of economic union does not seem very clear", while the EU has already reached "an degree of progress in economic integration". It is necessary to intensify the efforts for Europe to speak in one voice "in the international economic and financial debates", he repeated.