We had, after the Irish request was presented, a phone conference on Sunday night. We were informing our G7 partners, and so far I have the impression that the work our team is delivering in Dublin is progressing at a quite rapid path. So I do think that all which reasonably could be done has been done.
Silvia Wadhwa: Have we learnt something, or have politicians above all learnt something from the Greek crisis?
Jean-Claude Juncker: It is not only for politicians to draw lessons from the Greek crisis.
The main conclusion, I think, that policy makers have drawn from the Greek crisis is that policy makers have to act in a more preventive an proactive way. The Greek problems were known to some extent, we were telling the Greeks that they had to undertake effective action. They have taken effective action, but the actions which were taken, were taken with some delay.
All the countries of the euro-area should know that now time has come to give priority to fiscal consolidation, and in all the so-called weaker countries this consolidation process is underway.
Silvia Wadhwa: One of the last EU-summits, when we had some proposals on the table for the Van Rompuy group, they seemed to be somewhat watered down from what the EU-Commission wants in terms of automatism instead of rigidity in getting fiscal sinners back on track. Are you a bit disappointed about that?
Jean-Claude Juncker: I'm more than a little bit disappointed.I do think that the, more or less, decisions which have been taken by the European Council at a first stage are not far-reaching enough. I think that, during the process which now is underway and which has to deal with the so-called secondary legislation, everything possible should be done in order to have the sanctions applied more automatically.
I do think– it sounds a little bit technical, but it's highly political – that the Council of Ministers should always decide on the basis of reverse qualified majority, not only applying reverse qualified majority at the very end of the procedure when it comes to imposing sanctions, but I would like the Council of Ministers to vote on the basis of reverse qualified majority at the very first stage of the procedure. That means, when the Commission puts forward a recommendation saying that the country a or b is diverging, I do think that the Council has to adopt such a recommendation by reverse qualified majority.