Eurozone chief rejects French proposal to update ties with ECB
(BRUSSELS) - The head of eurozone finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, rejected a French proposal to update relations with the European Central Bank in a newspaper interview on Wednesday.
"We can always improve things but I don't feel the need to make an issue out of the subject," Luxembourg's finance minister and premier told French daily Le Monde.
French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said in the French business newspaper La Tribune on Monday that she would propose an update to relations between EU finance ministers and the ECB at a meeting next week in Nice.
France has long led attacks on the central bank for not cutting interest rates in the face of weakening growth but has found little support among its eurozone partners who stress the ECB's independence from political pressure.
Juncker also said that France was on track to keep its public deficit in line with an EU limit of three percent of output this year despite sharply slowing growth.
He said he was willing to have a third term as chairman of the Eurogroup of finance ministers with his second mandate about to expire.
"I said that I wasn't asking for it. However if a proposal was made to me, I would not say no," Juncker told the newspaper.
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