Euro Ministers Seek New Crisis Momentum as Unrest Returns

 

European finance chiefs will seek to win back crisis-management momentum to navigate the currency area through emerging political pitfalls after markets signaled last week that the three-year crisis is far from over.

Ministers from the 17-member euro area meet in Brussels today to discuss aid to Cyprus and Greece as a tightening election contest in Italy and a political scandal in Spain disrupt market calm. Group of 20 finance chiefs and central bankers will gather in Moscow Feb. 15-16.

“We don’t know yet how we’re going to get out of the crisis,” Wolfgang Franz, the chairman of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s council of economic advisers, told Welt am Sonntag. “If the crisis is a marathon, we’ve got two-thirds of the course behind us. But the last third is always the hardest.”

European Union leaders who last week reached a seven-year budget agreement that for the first time cuts spending will look ahead to Italy’s Feb. 24-25 elections as polls show the vote might fail to deliver a governing majority. European stocks last week posted a second weekly drop as investor concern about policy roadblocks in Italy and Spain revived.

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