Suffering years of pain, the reforms as well as the strengthening of economic governance and growth-enhancing measures taken at EU level have started to deliver results, except the special case of Greece, Klaus Regling, the CEO of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) said here in a lecture on Friday.

Regling raised several data to clarify his comment, saying that the euro area as a whole had a fiscal deficit of about 4 percent in 2011, down from more than 6 percent in 2009 to 2010. Countries in the periphery, Spain and Italy, have delivered sizable fiscal adjustment, including several reform programs in labor markets, pension systems and tax.

"Indeed, Italy is expected to have its budget balanced in 2013, " Regling added.

As for macroeconomic imbalances in Euro area, Regling said that the competitiveness gap between Northern and Southern Europe has been cut in half, mainly due to export growth in all Southern European countries rather than import compression.

European banks have also been improved to finance the real economy after years of pain from excessive deleveraging. "All major European banks that had been identified having a capital shortfall have raised their capitalization to comply with stricter rules and met the 9 percent tier one capital requirement by end- June 2012," Regling said.

However, European adjustment strategy is delivering results except the cash-trapped Greece, which "is a really unique case in the EU area", Regling expressed as saying, adding that "the Greek economic situation is more difficult than that of any other European member state."

He said that the political system in Greece is much stronger that the other countries, including Spain, Portugal and Ireland, whose new governments implement the reforms that are necessary to complement the adjustment.

"As I remembered, they also have not been telling the truth about their economic data from the moment they joined the monetary union," Regling added.

"Nobody wants Greece to leave the euro area. It would be the most expensive solution for Greece and for other member states. It 's not policy objective that Greece should leave. So I also don't want to see Greece leave," Regling answered questions during the lecture as saying.

"But it's also true that it depends on Greek action," Regling added, "they have to deliver, otherwise financial assistance could stop, not because we want it to stop but two sides of the bargain have to be in place."