EU ready to support Portugal if required - Barroso
LONDON | Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:11am GMT
LONDON (Reuters) - The European Union is ready to support Portugal, if required, after the country has made necessary reforms, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Friday.
Asked in a BBC interview if he felt Portugal, wrestling with a high budget deficit, should be more open to a bailout, Barroso said it was not up to the EU to say what Lisbon should do.
"I'm telling them to make the reforms they need to do and afterwards if they feel they need the support, of course the European Union is ready to support them," he said, during a visit to Britain.
A euro zone source said on Thursday that EU member states were increasingly concerned about Portugal's ability to fund itself in financial markets and believed Lisbon would need to seek a bailout by April.
The EU has discussed a rescue plan for Portugal, but it is dependent on Lisbon asking for the aid and making that request to both the EU and the International Monetary Fund. Portugal remains adamantly opposed to asking for assistance.
Portuguese officials have said in recent days that it is up to Europe as a whole to resolve the debt crisis, sending the message that if the EU can agree on a "comprehensive package" to tackle the crisis by a summit set for March 24/25, that will help Portugal weather the pressure from financial markets.
Barroso, a former Portuguese prime minister, said growth in the Portuguese economy was "a question of medium term."
"What Portugal has been doing is very courageous. According to the provisional figures, they have in fact obtained a deficit of the budget lower than ... the target agreed with us so they are taking the measures," he said.
"A country cannot be for a long time living above its means ... That's why we are insisting on the need for fiscal consolidation," Barroso said, acknowledging that deficit cuts involved difficult decisions.
The Portuguese government has promised to cut the budget deficit to 4.6 percent of gross domestic product this year from around 7 percent in 2010 through salary cuts for civil servants and across-the-board tax rises.
The governor of the Bank of Portugal, Carlos Costa, told a business daily this week that Portugal has already entered recession.
Barroso also praised the British government's efforts to cut its record peacetime budget deficit, calling them "extremely impressive measures in terms of fiscal consolidation."
allora come non detto.
quel giorno ho esagerato un po' troppo a tavola per fare tesoro delle sagge parole del negus