芬兰外长:欧元体系正常运作

I'm actually quite comfortable. I mean if you think about the crisis started outside the Eurozone, big troublemakers were actually the United States, Iceland, Latvia and Hungary, and I would argue that because of the Europe, because 18 countries are in it. We're fairly well protected. Does that mean everything is OK? No! But I think the system is working fairly well. It's taking a lot of hits.

How can you say it's working well when you've got two or three countries on the periphery, two have taken bailouts, and the third may have to take bailout and the big question is who's leading?

The markets are leading. That's basically what's happening and what my argument is that without the Europe, we'd be in much deeper trouble because we'd have a lot of countries devaluing their currencies would have a lot of competition between currencies. You know, Finland underwent a really problematic period in the early 1990s when bank crashes all over the places. We didn't need a bailout, but we did get some help from the IMF. Now you're getting some help from the IMF for various countries, but the system is holding up and the reason that the countries such as UK or Sweden are not in the Euro are bailing out or helping the Euro is because they know they're gonna run into biggest trouble if they don't do it

Why are you not angry, the way in which certain countries have nearly driven your precious Euro over the cliff.

Of course I'm angry. It is absolutely clear but the problem I would argue is that we don't have enough sticks to keep those countries under control. There was always a carrot, the carrot was fulfill the three criteria mastery to get into the Euro. Everyone wanted to do that and they did them. Ok, some of them except the figures are a little bit but then what happened was that..

Use the cheat word, they cheated.

I'm a diplomat. I can't say that

Basically, what happened then you created the Stability Pact, which was supposed to be the stick to keep public finances under control and those countries didn't do it. But, hey, is this only a problem for the Euro? No, could one for example say that the UK has been completely responsible with its public finances or could one argue for instance that those countries other in the European Union that have been outside the Europe have been responsible with the public finances? No, for me it's more remarkable that the Euro's still standing and so strong.