The ECB had no choice but to cancel its acceptance of Greek bonds in return for funding after the new leftist government in Athens abandoned its aid-for-reform programme, Liikanen told Germany's largest daily, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
He noted that the central bank had earlier warned Athens that the continuation of the exception depended on progress in reforms. Liikanen is a member of the ECB council and a former European budget commissioner.
The ECB's move on Wednesday shifted the burden onto the Greek central bank to finance its lenders. It's seen as raising the pressure on Athens to strike a new reform deal.
"A logical decision"
"We already communicated in January that the exceptional rule depended on a successful inspection of the reform programme," Liikanen told the paper in an interview published on Saturday.
"However we couldn't assume this. Therefore it was a logical decision. We have to stick to our rules," he said.
Also on Saturday, Greece's economy minister Georges Stathakis denied that the debt-laden state might run out of cash next month because of lower than expected tax receipts, saying a newspaper report to that effect was mistaken.
Stathakis, a member of the government that took office in Athens last month, was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying that "we will have liquidity problems in March if taxes don't improve".
