Greece has to make further savings to meet conditions for the distribution of the next tranche of its EU/IMF bailout plan, a senior policymaker of the European Central Bank was quoted on Sunday as saying.
"It is ... evident that the country has to intensify its savings efforts to meet the conditions for the payment of the next financial tranche," ECB Executive Board member Juergen Stark was quoted as saying by Tagesspiegel.
"Mistaken policies undertaken over many years have to be corrected. A debt cancellation changes nothing about that," Stark said, according to an advance copy of an interview to run in Monday's edition of Tagesspiegel.
The problems of indebted euro zone members Greece, Portugal and Ireland have not yet harmed the currency, Stark said.
"No one was to worry about the worth of the currency. The euro is a highly respected currency internationally."
Stark said on Friday that restructuring Greece's sovereign debt would pose potentially incalculable risks to the overall euro zone and would not solve the country's fiscal crisis.
REUTERS
