10 days to save the Eurozone, Rehn warns currency’s political leaders
COLLAPSE looms if Eurozone leaders do not take urgent action to integrate fiscal policy, EU commissioner Olli Rehn warned yesterday.
“The economic and monetary union will either have to be completed through much deeper integration or we will have to accept a gradual disintegration of over half a century of European integration,” Rehn said.
Emphasising how urgent the crisis is, he put a 10-day deadline on turning the situation around.
He put down Angela Merkel’s plan for treaty changes, saying it “cannot offer an immediate contribution to the solution of the current crisis”, though he believes such moves are necessary for longer-term stability.
Although he made clear the situation’s urgency, Rehn is not the first leader to apply such time limits.
Chancellor George Osborne claimed in September that politicians had “six weeks to save the euro”.
Prime Minister David Cameron, too, claimed in October that there were five days to save the currency union, which is also long in the past.