The eurozone's crisis is far from over and its members must tighten budgets and forge a banking union to leave behind the "fairy world" that allowed problems to grow, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Friday. Draghi's call for reform was echoed by International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde, who said implementing a banking union with powers to supervise all banks in the eurozone should be the currency bloc's top priority.
Speaking in Paris, where the government is trying to dispel concerns raised by the IMF that France could be left behind as Italy and Spain reform at a faster pace, Draghi said the eurozone's debt troubles were likely to stretch deep into next year. Another 173,000 people joined record jobless queues in the currency bloc in October while German retail sales and French consumer spending both fell more than expected, signs of the scale of the task still ahead for policymakers.
"We have not yet emerged from the crisis," Draghi told Europe 1 radio. "The recovery for most of the eurozone will certainly begin in the second half of 2013." "The crisis has shown that we were living in a fairy world," the ECB chief later added at a conference with top financial officials, pointing to the unsustainable debts, weak banks and poor policy co-ordination that gave birth to the crisis three years ago. ECB policymakers hold their regular monthly policy meeting next week and are widely expected to leave interest rates on hold at a record low of 0.75 percent. Economists are divided on whether the central bank will cut next year and Draghi has said it is now up to governments to act to end the crisis.
He stressed that the ECB's designing of a new bond-purchase programme, dubbed Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT), had helped lead to much more benign market conditions in the 17-country eurozone. Under the programme, the ECB is ready to buy potentially unlimited amounts of sovereign debt but until Spain - the prime candidate for help - applies for aid, it cannot use the tool. Simply announcing the plan, however, has eased the pressure on Spain and Italy, cutting around 2 percentage points since July off the interest they pay bond market investors to borrow over 10 years.
Data on Friday showed Spain registered a capital inflow of 31 billion euros in September, the first time international investors had put more money in to the country than they took out in 14 months. Draghi urged eurozone governments to push ahead quickly with implementing a banking union which he said must apply to all banks to avoid fragmenting the sector. Draghi urged governments to take advantage of the stabilising effect the OMT bond-purchase programme has had on markets to push ahead with a banking union as part of closer European integration, and to shape-up their economies.
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