MNI BRIEF: No Time To Waste Over EU's Challenges -ECB's Rehn

MNI (LONDON) - The European Union needs to invest in productivity growth, complete its single market and expand its network of free-trade agreements as the world undergoes as big a transition as during the fall of the Berlin Wall, Bank of Finland Governor Olli Rehn told an MNI Connect livestreamed event Tuesday.

The stabilisation of inflation and the weakening of the growth outlook have supported monetary policy easing since last summer, said Rehn, who also sits on the ECB's Governing Council. The ECB's monetary policy has been reasonably successful in bringing inflation down without inflicting unnecessary pain to the real economy, he said.