ECB ready to adapt policy to coronavirus but reforms key to recovery - de Guindos

ROME (Reuters) - The European Central Bank is ready to adapt its policy to the needs of the European Union after the coronavirus pandemic, but reforms by single countries will be more important than monetary policy, the bank's Vice President Luis de Guindos said on Tuesday.

"The main antidote will not be monetary policy - which we will conduct, knowing that we are not omnipotent - but rather reforms and budgetary policy of single governments," de Guindos told Italian daily La Stampa in an interview.

He added that although the ECB had acted "rapidly and effectively", the negative impact of the epidemic on Europe would have been more contained had the bloc been more integrated at the economic and monetary level.

(Reporting by Giulia Segreti and Francesca Piscioneri, editing by Stephen Jewkes)