Belgian finance minister says eurozone at turning point

Belgium’s finance minister, Steven Vanackere, believes the eurozone has begun to emerge from the three- year debt crisis. He credits political plans for more financial integration and the European Central Bank’s pledge to limit government borrowing costs, reports Bloomberg’s Jonathan Stearns. Vanackere said European leaders’ decision in June to seek a banking union and ECB president Mario Draghi’s announcement in September of a bond-buying programme for euro nations willing to sign up to budget-austerity conditions marked a turning point. He said “in-depth structural” changes by European countries to bolster the economy had further improved the outlook. “I am convinced that the signs of a turnaround are unmistakably there,” Vanackere told a conference of the European People’s Party in Brussels. He is part of a growing chorus of European politicians who allege that the 17-nation euro area has deterred the threat of a breakup triggered by Greece in late 2009 through a combination of rescue packages, budget tightening, more centralised oversight of national budgets and banks and the possibility of unlimited ECB intervention in the sovereign-bond market. Vanackere said the part played by the ECB alone had made a “tremendous change” but warned against complacency, signalling that the fight against unemployment should be the euro area’s priority. “Let’s not pretend that the crisis is over,” he said. “The crisis still is dramatically real. And it’s about longer- than-ever queues of job seekers.”