BERLIN (MNI) – German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said
Thursday that everything had to be done to prevent a breakup of the
Eurozone, but that the government was also thinking about an emergency
plan if the euro failed.
“Naturally, we’re thinking about everything, just like every local
government has an emergency plan,” Schaeuble said at a conference here.
Schaeuble said it was impossible to assess the consequences of a
failure of the euro, but he said the fallout from even one state leaving
the Eurozone would be bigger than the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers,
comparing the risk potential to a tsunami.
The contagion from the Eurozone debt crisis “has become a risk for
the stability of the euro as a whole,” he added.
Schaeuble reaffirmed that Germany would push at the EU summit this
week for EU treaty changes which would require countries to yield some
sovereignty over national budget to Brussels.
In order to achieve this, Britain will need to get some form of
compensation to agree to a treaty change, the minister said. “Hopefully
we will find some sort of agreement with the British,” he asserted.
Commenting on the role of the European Central Bank in the crisis,
Schaeuble stressed that, in contrast to the Federal Reserve’s role in
the United States, the role of the ECB was primarily to assure price
stability.
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com
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