Barroso: Greece remain within Eurozone

"Greece is, and will remain, a member of the euro area." Juan Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission told European Parliament Wednesday. He pledged that European Union would fully support Greece, on conditions that Greece fully implements its commitment. Barroso told the Parliament Members that the Commission was working to help Greece reactivate its economy. "A program of 500 million euros to guarantee EIB (European Investment Bank) loans to Greek SMEs is already under way. The Commission is also considering a wider guarantee mechanism to help banks lend again to the real economy." He said. He also pointed out that apart from helping debt-laden nations like Greece, maintaining stability in eurozone and preventing contagion of crisis should be primary tasks in the short term. "Some credible firepower and effective firewalls for Europe is needed to deal with sovereign debt crisis in the short term," Barroso said. The first step was to quickly fix the way to solve sovereign debt crisis, and the measures should be built on the base of EFST and upcoming European Stability Mechanism, according to Barroso. "EFSF shall be made both stronger and more flexible, this is what the Commission proposed in January," Barroso said. He also urged Member States to ratify resolution of July 21 summit, "only then, when you ratify this, it will be able to deploy precautionary interventions, intervene to support recapitalization of commercial banks and intervene in secondary markets to help avoid contagion." He said.