Greek prime minister Lucas Papademos called on the banks to assume their responsibilities and mobilise resources in order to spur the economy, speaking at a conference on "Growth in Greece: SMEs and Entrepreneurship in the 'Europe 2020' Strategy" organised in Athens on Friday by the European Commission.

The banks, he said, have the obligation of playing an active role and assuming their responsibilities, and to act quickly, mobilise available resources and finance businesses, "and the decisive prerequisite in all this is the recapitalisation of the banks".

Papademos explained that the reforms and measures contained in the programme being applied will not have immediate yield and are not expected to directly impact economic activity but will occur in the long-term and conversely, in the short-term, they will deepen recession, with adverse effects on the labour market and entrepreneurship.

He noted that thousands of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) have gone out of business in the past two years, stressing that this course of destruction of the SMEs must be reversed and employment must be boosted. "If the banks want capital reinforcement, they must finance the SMEs. If the SMEs want bank credits, they must safeguard employment and create new jobs".