German business must to do more save euro: Reding

(FRANKFURT) - Germany's top companies and executives must do more to support the euro, the EU's justice commissioner Viviane Reding said in a magazine interview.

"I would expect Germany's major companies and their top executives to come out more in support of the European cause. After all, they've benefitted enormously from the single market and from currency union," Reding told the weekly Manager Magazin's latest edition to be published on Friday.

Reding, a Luxembourg national, expressed dismay at the widespread criticism in Germany of the eurozone's proposed banking union and guarantees for fellow euro members.

Luxembourg had already made more money available per capita than Germany in the fight against the debt crisis, she said.

"But we think this is okay because we understand the need for the solidarity union," she said.

Germany, Europe's biggest and strongest economy and effectively its paymaster, should not forget that it, too, had profited greatly "from the great confidence placed in it by its neighbours," Reding said, pointing to European countries' support for German reunification.

The current debt crisis cannot be resolved without mutual trust.

"We won't get any further if we think in categories of incentives and sanctions," Reding argued, referring to Berlin's rejection of pooling debt in the single currency area.