Geithner: EU should make bailout fund more effective

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has created waves at a meeting of EU Finance Ministers by urging them to leverage the EU bailout fund to better tackle the debt crisis.

In a 30-minute address to the gathering in Poland, Geithner pressed for the €440bn European Financial Stability Facility to be made more effective to give it greater capacity to combat the problems in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Italy.

Austria's Finance Minister was quoted afterwards as saying she found it "peculiar" that America, which has "significantly worse fundamental data" than the Eurozone, was giving advice on how to tackle the European crisis.