Nobel winners pledge to 'stand by' euro

(OSLO) - European Union Nobel winners pledged at the award ceremony Monday "to stand by" the euro, saying the single currency was one of the strongest symbols of unity in the bloc's 60-year history.

"Today one of the most visible symbols of our unity is in everyone's hands," said European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso. "It is the euro, the currency of our European Union. We will stand by it."

The EU was handed the prize as it faces its worst crisis in six decades for turning Europe "from a continent of war to a continent of peace."

Tensions between the 17 nations that share the euro and those that remain outside the single currency are heightening amid crisis-linked demands to tighten economic and monetary union.

Tense relations between the bloc's "big two" nations France and Germany are meanwhile holding up a deal to set up a banking union seen as a key to the future of the eurozone.

First steps to such a union will be at the centre of a two-day summit Thursday and Friday that EU officials hope will agree a roadmap to tighter economic and monetary union in the next couple of years.