might well therefore be given emphasis in the near future, in the same way as there might now in october be two permanent secretary level jobs at some government ministries to enhance their workload capabilities just as most countries have decided long ago that since the chief civil servant was not the chief policymaker, it might be a good idea to have more than one, the way that ceos have coo, cfo and ccos. at this time of writing my statement, the results of tpi court cases have just been announced. that the court has decided in favour of the creditors is probably a decision welcomed by many, but the due process of the law be carried out is probably more important than the results. it does seem that the process of restructuring does not have too much to do with debtor, creditors or the thai people in the country. as a poor man, my sympathy is often with the debtors who somehow honestly or otherwise having made all that money must now lose it all solely because they were greedy and try to take more or take too big a risk at the period when few people could foresee the cataclysm that would strike the country. the tpi court decision seems to be “ classical thai ”. in the sense that we are a country which has a lot of compromises. i urge a new governance on the country where society would be rule - based. people compete according to known and clear rules and do not have to talk to civil servants just in order to do business. those rules were written 70 years ago in the change of the absolute to constitutional monarchy and tended, therefore, to be protective of the public and the consumer and to protect them against sharp practices or practices that might be deemed sharp of the business people. those rules have had to be changed over time, one by one, but they have not all been changed such for instance that a business company can not buy its own capital back to enhance its returns because it might be deemed financial engineering for its own sake, which the ignorant public might not understand. one day soon there might come a time when the country would be fully competitive and it would be good for the general public, but at the moment the sentiment that the public must be protected is still quite noticeable. and now the tpi decision seems to be no exception. in terms of legal framework, tpi has been put into rehabilitation process and that should satisfy investors for both foreigners and thais who wish the due process of the law to be administered

##s of emu. therefore, we attach great importance to the implementation of this pact. it is a misunderstanding to believe that the stability and growth pact is imposed on countries only as a price they have to pay for entry into emu. in fact the pact just stipulates what had to be achieved in any case, with or without emu. the need for addressing budgetary imbalances is clear, in particular, from the costs associated with the ageing of the population, which will soon require additional budgetary room for manoeuvre. according to long - term projections and estimates, current trends in birth rates and life expectancy, together with unfunded public pension and health care schemes, result in very high implicit government liabilities in most euro area countries. in many cases these implicit liabilities appear to be far in excess of official government debt levels. let me turn now to the contribution that structural reforms, particularly of euro area labour markets, can play in reducing unemployment and in supporting the stability of the euro. the high level of european unemployment is rightly a source of deep concern. clearly, the approaches that are most likely to have a lasting effect are those that address the root cause of the problem, not just the symptoms. the root causes of high unemployment in the european union are structural rigidities in labour markets as well as tax and public transfer policies. this view is supported by a wide body of academic literature and was also a key finding of the oecd jobs study. the underlying structural nature of the european unemployment problem can be seen most strikingly if one compares developments in europe with those in the united states over the last three decades. in 1970, the unemployment rate in the united states, at around 4 %, was at least twice as large as that prevailing in most european economies. since 1970 there has been significant cyclical variation in the unemployment rate in the united states, but no upward trend. at 4. 2 % in may 1999, the unemployment rate in the united states is almost the same as it was in 1970. in contrast, average european unemployment appears to have risen with each passing economic cycle. by the early 1980s the unemployment rates in the united states and europe had broadly converged. since then the unemployment rate in the united states has been below the average for the european union. despite recording some decline last year, the euro area unemployment rate was 10. 4 % in april 1999, more than double the corresponding rate in the united states.