BRUSSELS — Germany is pushing the other countries that use the euro to swiftly cut budget deficits as the only way Europe’s battered currency union can restore confidence and climb out of a debt crisis that threatens to wreck it.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told reporters Monday at a meeting of finance officials from the 16 eurozone countries that getting their deficits down was “the only task that everyone has to fulfill for himself and for all.”
Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is providing the largest chunk of a $139.7 billion bailout for Greece and a $952.4 billion rescue package for other euro nations. Voters and politicians there have bridled at bailing out free-spending governments.
The euro traded near four-year lows Monday at $1.2328 amid warnings from European leaders that the loan backstop announced last week to prop up troubled eurozone economies would not be enough to defuse market worries over the region’s ballooning debt. The Associated Press
