ECB's Nowotny - No need to bypass banks on credit

VIENNA, July 6 (Reuters) - The European Central Bank has no need to bypass the banking system at the moment to ensure credit reaches firms and consumers, ECB Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said on Monday.

ECB measures already put in place, which include massive liquidity injections and a plan to buy 60 billion euros of covered bonds, should eventually help boost credit, he said.

"For banks it is in their own interest to provide credit," Nowotny told a news conference at the Austrian central bank. "A strategy of taking money from the ECB and then putting it back into the deposit facility can only be short-term."

The financial situation in emerging Europe also now appears to be stabilising, he added. "We see no substantial risks for (emerging European states) that are members of the European Union; for the others it needs to be viewed differently."

"We assume that central and eastern European countries are of course impacted by the current economic downturn, but we also believe that there are signs of stabilisation in some areas."

He added that Austrian banks could tap the government as well as financial markets if they needed to increase their capital.

He declined to comment on Austria's involvement in the ECB's 60 billion bond buying programme.

(Reporting by Boris Groendahl, writing by Marc Jones; editing by David Stamp)