Tensions surface between EU and US at Polish meet

Tensions between the European Union and the US surfaced at Wroclaw in Poland, where a two-day meet of EU finance ministers concluded on Saturday.

US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, who had been specially invited by Poland, which currently chairs the EU, appeared critical of EU policymakers when he urged them to use the €440 billion European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to help tackle the debt crisis in countries such as Greece.

Geithner also enraged some EU ministers when he said at the sidelines of the meeting: ''Governments and central banks need to take out the catastrophic risk to markets.''

EU ministers lashed out at the US treasury secretary. Jean-Claude Trichet, the chief of the European Central Bank (ECB), said the eurozone's handling of public finances was better than that of the US. ''Taken as a whole, it is probably better than other major advanced economies,'' he noted.

He described the eurozone's mid-term prospects as ''quite encouraging compared with other major advanced economies,'' without naming the US.

Austrian finance minister Maria Fekter told reporters that Geithner ''conveyed dramatically that we need to commit money to avoid bringing the system into difficulty. I found it peculiar that even though the Americans have significantly worse fundamental data than the euro zone, that they tell us what we should do and when we make a suggestion ... that they say no straight away.''