“It must have obviously been the case that they made the judgement that this measure was necessary. We shall have to see if it stabilises the situation,” said finance minister Anders Borg to news agency TT.
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday took up her campaign for greater financial market regulation and stricter EU budgetary rules at a meeting in Berlin with top officials from around the world as markets remained in turmoil following Wednesday’s unilateral decision.
Swedish financial markets minister Mats Odell sees no need for Sweden, which currently has no specific rules for short-selling, to follow suit.
“Germany makes its own decisions. But if I look at Sweden, when it was really turbulent in the autumn of 2008, then we did not need it (a ban). I can not see any reason why it would be needed today either,” Odell said.
German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble called on the Berlin conference to pull together to push for greater financial regulations ahead of a G20 meeting in Canada next month.
The EU Commission has also called for coordinated action across the continent to tackle the ongoing debt crisis and euro instability; Mats Odell concurred while directing criticism at Germany for going alone.
“There is no doubt that there is always a problem with measures that are directed towards the markets which are not coordinated within the EU. You could say that the autumn 2008 was an example of that,” he said.
Member comments