President Niinistö argues that the debate over the eurozone crisis should stick to the big picture rather than getting bogged down in trivial details.
“Perhaps our debate has gotten off a bit onto the wrong track,” said the president. “We’re focussing on matters that – while they may be major issues in their own right – are relatively small in relation to the big picture. This is taking our attention away from the fact that we should together begin considering where this will all end and what we’ll do in that situation,” Niinistö said.
The president, a former finance minister and vice president of the European Investment Bank, called for a serious discussion of what is taking place in the eurozone.
“We must now go through all the alternatives of how this may end up,” he urged.
Hazards of printing more money
Niinistö has in the past suggested that the European Central Bank may eventually be forced to try to turn around the eurozone crisis through monetisation, in other words pumping more cash into circulation.
”I have predicted – not proposed – that the ECB will enter the fray by printing more cash. There are two problems with this. The democratic apparatus is completely left out of the process of distributing currency bills, and secondly it creates the danger of future inflation. The interest of the nation requires that we really concentrate on pondering what will happen if it ends up one way or another,” Niinistö.
He made the comments after the Chancellor of Justice announced a preliminary investigation into the legal status of Parliament's vote in support of the EU's permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, last month.
That followed comments by opposition leader Timo Soini of the Finns Party, who suggested that lawmakers were misled into approving the fund.
