LONDON (Reuters) - The European Central Bank's measures on Thursday to boost the economy were widely expected and to be welcomed but politicians need to act to improve growth, Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem said.
"These measures make sense. They are certainly helpful," Dijsselbloem told an EU seminar on Thursday in London, but he said the steps did not take away the obligations on countries to reform their economies.
"We cannot just depend on monetary policy. We still have to do a lot ourselves," he said. The rate cuts could "buy more time" to complete economic reforms and this time should not be wasted.
He also said the mid- and long-term outlook for inflation from the ECB "seems quite sensible", and has no doubts about their analysis or predictions. His worry was that the debate about deflation in the euro zone would become a "self fulfilling prophecy", prompting people to put off investments.
(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Janet Lawrence)