4  BIS central bankers’ speeches  I would of course prefer to have no country in the [excessive] deficit procedure and debt reduction going faster. But compared with other regions in the world, we are not doing that badly. However we have to do much more to raise our growth potential. To that end, structural reforms are urgently needed.
After the worst effects of the financial crisis that had broken out in the United States four years before had been reined in with much effort, and financial assistance programmes had been drawn up for the euro-area countries in greatest difficulty with their public finances, banking systems and external accounts, for a year now new tensions have been present in the sovereign debt market.