Eurozone will help Greece: Luxembourg

(FRANKFURT) - Eurozone countries will help Greece get out of its financial bind if necessary, Luxembourg Finance Minister Luc Frieden said on Friday, as markets showed deep concern about how Greece will refund its public finances.

"We don't have any other choice. Europe is a community of solidarity," Frieden told the German business daily Handelsblatt.

"We are not going to allow Greece to become a risk for the eurozone," Frieden said.

"All eurozone members are aware of the fact that the euro has helped them through the crisis, because it is stable," he added.

Financial markets have shown deepening anxiety in recent days about how Greece will raise the money it needs to refinance a huge public deficit.

Some press reports in Europe on Friday suggested that European Union authorities may be sceptical about a crash programme put forward by Greece to control its public deficit and put the economy on a new course.

Greece is seen as the 16-nation bloc's weak link since it revealed late last year that its public deficit and debt were much worse than initially thought.

Faced with the risk that market suspicion could spread to other countries on the eurozone's periphery, European Union leaders have placed Athens on a short leash to ensure it gets its finances back into shape.

"I think it is bad that markets speculate every day on a new country," Frieden said.

Italy, Portugal and Spain have come under increased financial market pressure since the Greek crisis erupted, but the Luxembourg minister insisted that "no eurozone country is going to declare bankruptcy."

Experts from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund visited Greece this week to monitor the country's plans to cut spending and raise revenues.

Frieden also expressed support for German central bank governor Axel Weber to become head of the ECB next year.

"It would not be a problem to have a German head, on the contrary," he said.

Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the eurogroup of ministers that oversee the eurozone, said last week: "Germany is going to have to fight" for Weber to get the position.

"I would not automatically push for Germany to get the post of ECB president," Juncker told Deutschlandfunk radio.

But after Portugal's central bank chief was named as the next ECB vice-president, Weber's chances of getting the top spot increased, observers say.

European Union customs normally result in a geographical distribution of major jobs, and the other presumed candidate for ECB president is the Italian central bank governor, Mario Draghi.