IMF chief urges swift eurozone action on debt plan

NEW YORK—International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde on Tuesday urged the eurozone to implement its plan to fight a sovereign debt crisis.

The agreement reached last Thursday at a European Union summit in Brussels was “a courageous move” that needs to be followed up by action, Lagarde said in a speech in New York.

“What from an IMF point of view remains to be done is clearly implementation,” she said.

“It’s also a matter of the governments themselves to actually deliver on the plan that they have signed up to on Thursday.”

Lagarde, a former French finance minister who was named the IMF’s first female chief in late June, cautioned that summer holidays could delay the agreement’s approval by European legislatures.

“It’s not going to happen overnight because as is often the case in many advanced economies of the northern hemisphere, August is relatively quiet. And parliaments are closed,” she said.

“But they don’t have the luxury of time. I think that there is an expectation that things now have to happen and have to be delivered, not only on the part of the countries directly concerned but also on the part of the governments that have actually, as I said, put money where their mouth was.”

The agreement struck by leaders of the 17-nation eurozone on Thursday would provide Greece with a second bailout, of 159 billion euros ($230 billion), to avert a potential debt default that could jeopardize the economic recovery in Europe and worldwide.

Among the package of measures agreed, leaders pledged to expand and strengthen the European Financial Stability Facility, a crisis fund established last year to aid troubled member economies.