The head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said today that European Union countries should work together and avoid unilateral steps to fight a global financial crisis.
'Cooperation and coordination in actions is the price of success. All kinds of cooperation have to be recommended,' Strauss-Kahn said at a news conference ahead of the annual meetings this weekend of the IMF and World Bank.
Unilateral action 'has to be avoided, if not condemned,' he said.
'I urge European countries to work together. There's no domestic solution in a crisis like this one,' said the French IMF managing director, who took the helm of the 185-nation institution a year ago.
'I know, having myself served as a financial minister of my country, how difficult it is in the European Union to make consensus and to make decisions. I don't underestimate the problems,' he added.
Strauss-Kahn, who served as a finance minister from 1997 to 1999, did not cite any particular measure or country, but he stressed that action need not be one-size-fits-all. Coordination 'doesn't mean taking the same action in every country,' he said.
Strauss-Kahn also criticised behind-the-scenes cooperation. 'What we have to avoid is a decision made by some country without keeping the other countries aware of what they're going to do or listening to the spillover effect from one country to another country. That's one part of the cooperation which has to be improved,' he said.
Policymakers need to draw lessons from current circumstances to determine what kind of policies should be developed and what kind of institutions should be rebuilt, he added.
