The European Union's economy commissioner on Friday appealed to the world's jittery financial markets to be patient, saying that contagion-containing measures recently agreed to by eurozone leaders should be finalized by early September, DPA reported
"I'm confident that once investors understand that all this work is underway behind the scenes, they will be reassured," Olli Rehn told reporters in Brussels at a hastily convened press conference, noting that the measures are being "fleshed out" so they can be passed on to national parliaments for ratification.
"This is the necessary and legitimate price we have to pay for living in democracies," he said. "We are working night and day."
His comments came after markets took a dive amid worries about the eurozone's ability to contain its debt crisis and prevent it from spreading to Italy and Spain.
The market speculation plaguing those two countries is "incomprehensible," Rehn said, noting that "it is not as if the fundamentals of the Italian or Spanish economies have changed overnight."
He, however, acknowledged that the EU had failed in reassuring markets about the state of the eurozone at large.
He said the importance of the decisions agreed at a special eurozone summit in July 21 - including a second rescue package for Greece and an expanded mandate for the common currency area's bailout fund - should have been more effectively communicated.
"We all in Europe will have to ensure rigor in our communication and sufficient verbal discipline, so that we ensure that our joint message will be listened to and understood as we want it to be," he said. "This is to be taken as genuine self-criticism on my part."