"This is an industry that the world needs... we need to reform this industry and change it, " he said and admits that banking has become "a bit detached from society" but is now "coming down to earth with a bump".

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The government, however, insists that it needs to approach economic and political reform in its own way and at its own pace.

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But it has stressed that the North needs to follow the trail it blazed a little over 30 years ago when it set about reform.

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But that means that the EP needs to be more vigorous, more ambitious than it has been so far in driving the reform of the EU as a whole, which is desperately needed.

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The latest estimates suggest that Venezuela needs nearly 1m more houses than it has, whether in town or country (where land reform, as in most of Latin America, lags far behind needs or even the law).

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