I will do everything to save Euro: Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she expects turbulence in 2012 as she does “everything” to save the euro amid Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.

“The path to overcoming this won’t be without setbacks but at the end of this path Europe will emerge stronger from the crisis than before,” Merkel said in a New Year’s television speech to the nation, sent in advance by e-mail.

Merkel will meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Berlin on January 9 to discuss revisions to Europe’s fiscal rulebook following decisions made at a December 9 summit.

A final accord by euro leaders on the German-French proposals agreed at the summit is due in March.“Today, you can trust that I will do everything to strengthen the euro,” Merkel said.

“This will only succeed if Europe learns from the mistakes of the past. One of these is that a common currency can only be successful if we cooperate more than in the past in Europe.”

A crisis that began in Greece two years ago has moved to the euro-area’s core and leaders are struggling to convince investors they can contain the risk and assure the euro’s survival. Germans are split over whether the debt crisis can be fixed, with 52 per cent of voters saying that a “fundamental solution” can be found to the euro-region’s woes, according to a Forsa GmbH poll for financial consultants AWD Holding AG published on December 29.

Some 22 per cent of the respondents expect the region to abandon the euro and return to national currencies while 90 per cent said in response to a separate question that other euro member states would join Greece, Portugal and Ireland in needing aid.

Crisis ‘manageable’
Finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble urged Germans to show more “calm” over the crisis in 2012, saying in a December 24 interview in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that it is “manageable.” Germany plans to speed up paying installments to Europe’s permanent bailout fund to boost market confidence in the euro area’s resolve to beat the crisis.

The euro-region is “close to a turning point” in the crisis, Norbert Barthle, the budget spokesman for Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said in an interview on December 29, adding that Germany may not even be forced to raise its net borrowing next year to accommodate increased payments to the European Stability Mechanism due to rising tax revenue.