European Commission president Jose Barroso said failure to follow through on a “sustainable” economic recovery plan would undermine the euro.
“It is very important to reinforce the euro and to have economic and financial policies that are sustainable,” Mr Barroso told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, today.
“If not, we will put the euro, one of the great successes of European integration, at risk.”
He rejected criticism that the European Union’s response to the sharpest recession since World War II has been uncoordinated, noting that national governments were bound to take the lead because they control spending.
Stimulus measures have equalled about 5 per cent of gross domestic product, Mr Barroso said, propping up the 16-nation euro economy since it shrank 2.5 per cent in the first quarter, the most since the currency was introduced in 1999.
Mr Barroso dismissed arguments by Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister who heads the Liberal group in the Parliament, that central EU bodies have done too little to combat the crisis. “We cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach,” Mr Barroso said.
“We are not the United States of America, we are not an integrated nation state. We have different situations. You cannot ask Germany and Latvia to do the same,” he said.
Bloomberg