German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the risk of an anti-euro party arising had to be taken seriously in a newspaper interview in which he defended the troubled European single currency. "The danger of an anti-euro party needs to be taken seriously," the 68-year-old told German daily Bild in comments published on Sunday due to appear in Monday's edition.
There have been calls from some German academics and on internet forums for Germany to leave the euro and a recent poll showed majority of Germans believed the country would have been better off to keep the deutschemark.
"This is all the more reason to explain to people what they get out of the euro. That the euro protects them from the turbulence of globalisation better than a national German currency ever could," Schaeuble said. "Without the euro every German would be poorer. Without the euro, the labour market would look a lot worse," he said. Schaeuble was speaking as pressure rose on eurozone governments to boost the size of a rescue fund for crisis-hit member states and avert a new bout of market turmoil that could threaten the stability of the currency.
Echoing comments he made on Friday, Schaeuble described recent ructions surrounding the euro as an attempt by financial markets to see if the currency was built to last.
"Financial markets are testing whether the construction of the joint currency area will hold together. Whether it will work having a joint currency, but also leaving financial policy to national (governments) at the same time," he said.
The veteran politician, who belongs to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), said there could be no question of allowing the 16-nation currency union to split, for example, into a north-south divide.
"That would cost us much, much more than everything we're doing now for the euro now," he said. "The economy would suffer unforeseeable consequences, and hence a lot of jobs would be at risk. And banks would also face massive problems."
Part of the problem was that people no longer took things they had already achieved that seriously, Schaeuble said.
"Great successes are also quickly taken for granted," he added. "That's the euro's problem." The minister added that if other European nations wanted to sort out their financial problems, they should look to Germany, which aims to consolidate the federal budget by around 80 billion euros over the next four years.
"Obviously model pupils are never particularly well-liked, especially when they say: 'do it like us'. But it can't be helped: nobody was forced to join the currency union," he said.