The candidate for President of the European Commission, Jean- Claude Juncker, responding to a question about austerity in the countries of South Europe and Greece and whether this will change he said that “Fiscal consolidation is needed, fiscal austerity, not extreme austerity…”.

On the question whether after Ireland and Portugal, Greece will exit soon from the memorandum, he answered no.
“At the beginning of the crisis we didn’t have the right tools to fight it . This was a shortage in the Maastricht Treaty because we had given a great importance to the monetary pole and the ECB , rather than to economic and political governance of the eurozone, which is further enhanced with the tools that we implemented, and which allow us to respond in a better way if a sudden event occurs. There were some details in restructuring programs in various countries, which I did not like,” Mr Juncker said.

“But in general , these programs , as they were decided and implemented, had a beneficial effect ,” he added and continued: “Ireland exited from the program and so did Portugal. We managed to stabilize the banking sector in Spain , and Greece has made a significant progress since its first recorded primary surplus for many years. ”

“I believe that Greece is on the right track. Although I would not say that Greece is on the the way to exit from the memorandum, it is on the right track to be able to get rid of foreign aid. The programs worked”, Mr Juncker said.