Greece can't have parallel currency with euro: Austrian bank governor

Austria's National Bank Governor Ewald Nowotny rejected a parallel currency for Greece here Friday, saying such a currency should not exist.

"When a country is part of the euro, the currency of that country is the euro," Nowotny, who is also a member of the European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council, told a press conference.

He said what is currently being discussed in that regard relates to "perhaps very short-term" measures in an emergency situation, similar to those in California in 2009 when the U.S. state issued IOUs that temporarily circulated as a parallel currency to the U.S. dollar to cover a budget gap. It later repurchased these against dollars when the financial tensions had eased.

"One can do this for maybe a week," Nowotny said, but added this does not have to do with money.

As long as Greece remains under the systems of the ECB, the "monopoly of the ECB counts," and any money that is produced outside of this monopoly is "from a legal viewpoint counterfeit money," he said.

Were a country to withdraw from the eurozone, however, it "could of course print its own money," Nowotny said, adding "that then no longer has anything to do with us."

Greece is to hold a referendum on Sunday to decide whether or not to accept the proposal made by its creditors to guarantee further financing.

A "no" result would increase the possibility of a credit event and the need to introduce a new currency, while the opposite may open the window for an agreement with lenders and lead to the resignation of the government, according to analysts. Endi