Nick Clegg warns that eurozone collapse will fuel 'extremism'
Source: BBC
A collapse in the eurozone would create the "ideal recipe for an increase in extremism and xenophobia", Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has warned. As the Greek debt crisis continues, he told the German newspaper Der Spiegel the single currency could not survive through "fiscal discipline alone".
Speaking to Der Spiegel, Mr Clegg called for greater integration by eurozone economies, saying: "You have to have something which creates a fiscal accompaniment to monetary union.
"Whilst I have a huge amount of sympathy with German taxpayers and German politicians who are reluctant, understandably because Germany is the paymaster of the European Union, to entertain these ideas, I fear that they are unavoidable. It is not sustainable to believe that the eurozone can thrive through fiscal discipline alone - it also has to, at some level, include an ability to either share debt or to deal with shocks in one part of the system or the other through fiscal transfers."
He warned that the crisis could result in electoral success for the far right and far left unless Europe's leaders acted decisively, saying: "This cannot carry on, because the combination of economic insecurity and political paralysis, we know this from the history of our continent, is the ideal recipe for an increase in extremism and xenophobia."
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18139454
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