"Taken as a whole, it is probably better than other major advanced economies," ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet said at the close of talks in Poland among European Union finance ministers marred on Friday by a spat with guest US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
As unions prepared a mass protest against European austerity measures, Trichet described the eurozone's medium-term prospects as "quite encouraging compared with other major advanced economies" and also tipped a combined year-end, annual deficit level of 4.5 percent of GDP.
Hosts Poland, the current EU chair, took the decision to invite Mr Geithner to the talks on Friday, in a sign of spiralling global concerns - and EU ministers said the American was there to pass on lessons from stateside.
"Governments and central banks need to take out the catastrophic risk to markets," Geithner said on the sidelines of the talks, although Washington later denied he was writing "prescriptions" for Europe.
Mr Geithner and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble clashed sharply on Friday over the way forward.
Mr Geithner urged eurozone leaders to bolster a €440bn rescue fund for troubled member states, but saw that demand instantly rebuffed by Germany.
Berlin instead demanded Washington drop its opposition to a global financial transactions tax - "emphatically" resisted by Mr Geithner, according to Austria's Maria Fekter.
Both Mr Schaeuble and Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders had highlighted the United States as carrying the world's heaviest debt burden going into the discussions.
"Yes it's better to organise something on financial transactions on the worldwide level, but it's impossible," Reynders said in Wroclaw on Saturday.
"We will do that within the European Union, and maybe also if it's impossible for the entire EU in the eurozone," he added.
Europeans have sought to implement either a tax on profits or turnover from the financial sector since governments were forced to bail out banks caught up in the 2008 credit crunch that started in the United States.
But Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski said a preliminary debate on Friday "raised a lot of emotions" and outlined "considerable divisions."
The Telegraph
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