European Central Bank President Mario Draghi pledged on Thursday to do whatever was necessary to protect the Euro zone from collapse, including acting to lower unreasonably high government borrowing costs.
Germany's DIW economic research institute slashed its 2013 forecast for Europe's largest economy by 0.5 percentage points to 1.9% on Wednesday, saying the Euro zone debt crisis would have a bigger impact than it had originally expected.
Britain fell deeper into recession than initially thought in the first quarter of 2012 due to a slump in construction output, raising the likelihood that the Bank will opt to inject more stimuli to protect the economy from the Euro zone debt crisis.
Euro zone officials have told members of the currency area to prepare contingency plans in case Greece quits the bloc, an eventuality which Germany's central bank said would be testing but manageable.
Germany's persistent policies to push down wages have harmed fellow Euro zone member countries and contributed to the bloc's current debt crisis, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said in Geneva.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy have said they will meet next week to discuss the Euro zone debt crisis. Their first meeting of 2012 comes after all EU countries except the UK agreed to work together on a new treaty to stabilise the Euro zone.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said agreements reached at an EU summit this week will solve the Euro zone's debt crisis and that Germany needs a strong Europe.
Pessimistic comments from Germany and new figures exposing deepening stress among Europe's banks dented financial market hopes of a turning point in the Euro zone's debt crisis at a summit this week.
Germany and France stepped up a drive on Monday for intrusive powers to reject national budgets in the Euro zone that breach EU rules, as a market rout of European debt eased temporarily on hopes of outside help for Italy and Spain.
Germany and France again on Wednesday over whether the European Central Bank should take bolder steps to stem the Euro zone debt crisis, with Chancellor Angela Merkel issuing one of her starkest warnings yet against fiddling with the central bank's strict inflation-fighting mandate.