Eurogroup president says Europe has debt crisis

The prime minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, has said that the euro is not in a crisis and remains a stable currency.

Juncker, who was speaking at an event in Zurich on Wednesday evening, said: “We do not have a euro crisis. We have a debt crisis.”

He added that it was no catastrophe that the euro had fallen by about 15 per cent against the Swiss franc. “The euro will be around for longer than me,” Juncker said.

At a news conference after a debate on Europe with the deputy president of the rightwing Swiss People’s Party, Christoph Blocher, Juncker said it was still too early to say when the crisis in the euro zone would be over because a number of “relevant decisions” still had to be taken.

In a related development, a vice-president of the Swiss National Bank, Thomas Jordan, said an end to the European debt crisis was key for Switzerland’s economy as the lack of confidence in the euro was driving up the Swiss franc and hitting Swiss exporters hard.

At an event of the centre-right Radical Party, he said Swiss economic growth would slow to around 1.5 per cent in 2011 as the cooling of the world economy and the strong franc took their toll.

“A solution [of the euro debt crisis] is a very vital interest for Switzerland,” Jordan  said.