EU-President Van Rompuy tells Spanish daily El Pais: "Europeans must bite the bullet to improve economy"

European countries must bite the bullet and impose "unpopular" measures to save Europe's economic model, EU president Herman van Rompuy said in a newspaper interview published on Friday.  "The European model cannot survive without stronger economic growth and Europe cannot play a role in the world without a more robust economy," Van Rompuy told Spanish daily El Pais.

The European Union president denounced populist policies which he described as a "great danger."
He told El Pais: "Populism makes it difficult to take measures which will have to be adopted for the future of Europe. When I see the economic agenda, the budgetary challenges ... I see that we will be forced to take take unpopular measures in the next few years."

On that same note Diego López Garrido, the Spanish Secretary of State for the EU, said the Union is currently reviewing its foundations. He stressed that the leading future objective of the EU involves overhauling its "economic government/model" in order to overcome the current economic crisis, which is why European leaders are "so carefully studying and preparing" the Europe 2020 strategy.

"In response to the crisis, the EU is designing a somewhat "revolutionary" new economic government: Europe is looking to emerge from the crisis, to come up with a new growth model, establish better supervision of the financial system, and introduce regulation and tax co-ordination that has until now been non-existent in the financial system", he said.


EU-Digest