German minister 'certain' summit has solved crisis

"I am certain that we will be able to handle the debt crisis in Europe with the agreed, far-reaching measures on institutional reform of the European currency union," Schaeuble wrote in a guest contribution for Focus magazine.

European leaders agreed yesterday to draft a new treaty for deeper economic integration in the euro zone, although Britain, the region's third largest economy, refused to join the 17 euro states and nine other EU countries in a fiscal union.

Schaeuble said Europe had always emerged more strongly from crises and that was important for Germany, the bloc's biggest economy.

"If we act as individual nation states we can at best delay our loss of significance, but we would not be able to prevent it," he wrote.

Schaeuble also reiterated that the euro was a worthy successor to Germany's former mark currency and had delivered more price stability over its 12-year history than the mark.

UK’s Osborne - British Finance Minister George Osborne said today that euro zone countries had supported their currency by agreeing to draft a new treaty for deeper economic integration, but much work still needed to be done to stabilise it.

Osborne also reiterated Prime Minister David Cameron's view that Britain was right to opt out of the plan for a fiscal union on Friday because it was not in the UK's interests.

Britain was left isolated as the other 9 EU countries outside the currency bloc said they were prepared to back the 17 euro economies in a new treaty, although some sounded notes of caution.

Osborne dismissed suggestions Britain would lose influence within the EU after it blocked changes to the existing joint treaty, saying the government had ensured that all 27 members would discuss issues related to the EU's role as a trading bloc.

"We have protected Britain's financial services and manufacturing companies that need to be able to trade their products into Europe from the development of euro zone integration spilling over and affecting non-euro members of the EU," he said.

"If we had signed this treaty ... then we would have found the full force of the European treaties, the European court, the European Commission, all these institutions enforcing those treaties, using that opportunity to undermine Britain's interests, undermine the single market.