11.09.2012
By Simon Miller
It is up to eurozone countries to correct the policy mistakes made in the past according to the German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.
Opening the debate on the German budget, the finance minister said that to resolve the mistakes of the past was the basis for all bailouts and European Central Bank actions and added that the independence of the bank needed to be defended.
He commented: "The causes lie in the mistakes of the financial and economic policies which member states have pursued and (the crisis) can only be solved via these.
"There is no comfortable way out of that, neither through pooling debt nor by casually using the bank's printing presses."
Schaeuble was speaking as markets awaited a German Constitutional Court ruling on the legality of the eurozone bailout fund.
There were fears that a challenge by German MP Peter Gauweiler would delay the ruling but the Court issued a short statement this morning saying that its judgement would be heard as expected tomorrow (12.9.2012).
Tensions run high in the eurozone at the moment as pressure is put upon Spain and Italy about applying for a bailout but Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy told AFP that he could not accept that [the troika] tell us "which are the concrete policies in which we have to cut or not cut".
He added: "If there is one area I won't touch it is pensions because the pensioner is the most fragile person."
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