'No euro crisis'

In a newspaper interview on Sunday, European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet rejected fears that the European common currency, the euro, was on the brink of crumbling.

"There is no euro crisis. What we are currently observing in some eurozone countries is primarily a debt crisis in public budgets," Trichet wrote in the mass-circulation Bild am Sonntag.

His comments appeared alongside a report that an increasing amount of Germans - now 58 percent of the population - mistrust the euro, according to surveys by the Emnid polling firm.

Trichet justified his comments by saying the currency had achieved its purpose in the 12 years since it was introduced by keeping average eurozone inflation below 2 percent annually.

"We have maintained the euro's purchasing power," the ECB chief wrote, highlighting Germany's average 1.5 percent inflation rate since 1999.

"This is the best result over such a period of time in the past 50 years," he added.

Greece on the agenda Monday

The report said Emnid's survey also indicated that just under 50 percent of Germans supported an increase in EU aid for troubled Greece, whose high debt is one of the main problems facing the eurozone.

European finance ministers are set to convene on Monday to go over the details of a second Greek bailout and to vote through a 78-billion-euro EU/IMF rescue package for Portugal, despite the likely absence of IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was arrested in New York on Sunday on sexual assault charges.

The ministers are also set to recommend Italian central bank governor Mario Draghi as Trichet's successor at the Tuesday meeting, as the latter's 8-year-term as ECB head comes to an end this autumn.

Author: Gabriel Borrud (AFP, dpa)
Editor: Kyle James