Ljubljana:The European Union should improve mechanisms of saving its indebted members, ECB Governing Council member Marko Kranjec told the Slovenian daily Dnevnik in an interview published in its weekend edition.
He also said the European Central Bank's (ECB) decision to start buying government bonds was "autonomous" and added the ECB has in the past shown that it "can act very quickly if necessary".
He said the financial crisis showed that banks needed to be more regulated and forecast that a special tax on banks will be introduced in the future. He also said other countries would follow Germany by prohibiting naked short-selling but gave no details.
"The EU is a political and economic project and I am sure that Europe without the union would not be an important player on the world market," Kranjec said.
"If it is worth saving the union, it is worth saving every one of its members but saving mechanisms have to be improved. The EU project demands tough negotiations as countries did not hand over their national sovereignty to the EU."
He said the ECB decided to start buying government bonds because it was difficult to ensure adequate financing for member states in which markets did not have sufficient trust or lacked knowledge on them.
He added the ECB would shortly form a body for European risk management to improve its actions on financial stability and prevent "systemic financial crises".
He said the EU and its central banks would also establish an independent risk rating institution which shows "lack of trust in commercial credit rating firms".
Kranjec also said the consequences of the financial crisis would be much worse if states had not saved financially troubled banks but added that banks will in the future pay their bill, too.
