Germany debt larger than Spain's, says Luxembourg PM

BERLIN - The head of eurozone finance ministers has said Germany, before lecturing its partners, should remember that it, too, has a debt higher than Spain's, in a newspaper interview. Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker called the level of Germany's debt "worrying", according to an advanced copy of an interview with the Bonner General-Anzeiger newspaper to appear Thursday. "In Germany, people often act as if the country had no problems, as if Germany is free of debt and all the others had excessive debts," he told the German paper. "I think the level of German debt is worrying. Germany has higher debts than Spain. Only nobody here wants to know that," he said. "It appears to be more comfortable to say the people in the South are lazy and the Germans are grafters. But it is not so." Asked about Berlin's influence on decisions taken in the eurozone, Juncker underscored that Germany was the leading economy and was an "engine" which nobody could replace if it broke down. — AFP