EU crisis fund 
postponed to the future
BRUSSELS – The European Monetary Fund against crises becomes a “long-term goal”: this is the conclusion of yesterday’s debate in the European Commission, which has seen the defeat of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s line pressing for immediate action to its constitution.

Decisive was the “friendly fire”: even the president of the Bundesbank, Axel Weber, pronounced being clearly opposed to the initiative, to the extent that the Commission president, Josè Barroso, was alluded to “different positions even within the same country “. Thus, prevailed the position expressed by the French Finance Minister, Christine Lagarde, who had called the proposal “interesting”, but “non-priority”. Instead, favorable statements came from the Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Olli Rehn, and Barroso justified the postponement to an indeterminate future also with the fact that modifications to the Treaties may be necessary, and therefore the realization cannot be immediate.

The Commission, added Barroso, is working on how to achieve greater coordination of the Member States’ economic policies, to prevent imbalances from growing. And he announced the green light for another proposal by Merkel (but supported by France, as well as Greece and Luxembourg),

that is, a tightening on credit default swaps, the financial instruments to insure against the risks of bankruptcy of an issuer. However, this will be limited to short selling operations involving state debts.

(10 March 2010)