Washington - United States President Barack Obama is confident that European countries can resolve the euro crisis that has caused turmoil on the financial markets, the White House said on Monday.
EU officials are weighing a new bailout fund to help struggling countries deal with the eurozone debt crisis, along with a fiscal pact to toughen budgetary discipline. The pact has been signed by all EU countries except Britain and the Czech Republic.
“The president believes that the Europeans have the capacity to take action to resolve this and that they have already taken actions that are significant,” White House spokesperson Jay Carney told a media briefing.
But he warned that “serious risks remain and there's no question that the markets remain sceptical” about the measures taken thus far to turn around Europe's economy.
“So we obviously believe that more steps need to be taken,” said Carney.
The Treasury Department also echoed the White House's call for more European action.
“European leaders appear to be moving with a heightened sense of urgency. We're hoping to see accelerated European action over the next several weeks, including in the run-up to the Leaders G-20 meeting in Mexico,” a US Treasury official said, referring to the June 18-19 summit in Los Cabos.
“Movement to strengthen the European banking system will be of particular importance in this time period.”
Carney said that during consultations with their European counterparts, US officials have raised “the lessons we learned from the experience we had” during the US financial crisis.
Washington pointed to “difficult steps” taken in 2008 such as bailing out banks, he added. - AFP