At the high-profile Reuters NEXT meet-up in New-York Swedish Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson made a straight-forward statement about Europes key problems.
The top-ranking official pointed out that potential US trade rules arent the main issue for European economics; instead low-level productivity remains the real problem (which needs immediate attention from EU leadership).
The destiny of Europe is not in the new administrations hands. We need to step up
Her no-nonsense assessment highlighted that EU countries should focus on fixing internal issues - not external factors: many experts agree with this down-to-earth approach to economic growth
The finance chiefs comments came during a wide-ranging discussion at the conference which brought together global decision makers and industry leaders to talk about world-wide financial trends