(MADRID) - The are no easy or quick solutions to the global financial crisis, European Union Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs Joaquin Almunia said on Thursday.

"There are no immediate or easy solutions but I believe we are already advancing with solutions," the former Spanish employment minister told public radio RNE.

"Even if we have not yet found the defininitive solution, there have been concerted actions and the fact that yesterday a long list of central banks, starting with the ECB and the Fed, simultaneously lowered their interest rates is a very important step," he added.

This decision "sends a very clear message to markets", he said.

On Wednesday the US Federal Reserve and the the European Central Bank along with the Bank of England and central banks in Sweden and Switzerland all cut their interest rates by half a percentage point.

China joined in, too, cutting 27 basis points off its key rate.

Almunia said all measures, from bailouts of troubled lenders to more general rescue plans aimed at the entire financial system, would allow "financial institutions to start to rebuild their confidence", Almunia said.

"More things must be done, liquidity must continue to be supplied to the system as has been done by the European Central Bank or other central banks, because liquidity is not coming anymore from interbank markets, the natural medium where they should come from," he said.

The EU monetary affairs chief said the way financial markets operate must be changed.

"The financial system of the future will not be like the one which generated this deep disorder," he said.

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