(Reuters) - Senior euro zone officials dismissed any risk of the single currency area breaking up after financial markets, alarmed by Ireland's debt crisis, forced the borrowing costs of Portugal and Spain to record highs.
"There is zero danger," Klaus Regling, chief of the euro's financial safety net, European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), told German daily Bild in an interview published on Thursday when asked if the euro zone could break apart.
"It is inconceivable that the euro fails," he said.
Some economists and commentators, mostly in Britain and the United States, have suggested the 16-nation common currency launched in 1999 could split because of peripheral members' high debts and deficits, and a loss of competitiveness with Germany.
But Regling said: "No country will give up the euro of its own will: for weaker countries that would be economic suicide, likewise for the stronger countries. And politically Europe would only have half the value without the euro."
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