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Spring European Council

23 March 2009

Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire) (Con): What reassurance and hope can be offered to those who, 20 years ago, were citizens of the Warsaw pact and placed their hope and their trust in responsible capitalism, but who now feel that their world is falling about them, and feel totally disillusioned?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is right. We have a huge problem in parts of eastern and central Europe, because German banks, Austrian banks, Italian banks, Belgian banks and even British banks are having to withdraw, or are withdrawing, to their own home bases. What we therefore need is an international effort to help individual countries that do not have resources of their own with which to rebuild their banking systems. That is why the European Union has raised its balance of payments assistance to those countries, and that is why when we meet at the G20 we will want the International Monetary Fund to have the additional resources that are necessary to deal with crises. But we do not want just to deal with crises; we want to prevent crises, so we will have to look at better mechanisms by which we can help those countries of central and eastern Europe that are being let down by the current financial crisis.