Eurozone economy "on right road"

Eurozone leaders have put the continent's economy on "the right road" with their agreement last night on measures to resolve the crisis in the single currency, Chancellor, Finance secretary, George Osborne said Thursday.Osborne said the eurozone countries had made "very good progress" in talks which stretched into the early hours in Brussels, but cautioned that it was now necessary to keep momentum up and deliver precise details on how the three-part agreement will work.However, he insisted that Britain will not contribute money to the European Financial Stability Facility bailout fund or to any IMF package specifically targeted at the eurozone area.Officials in Brussels said an accord had been reached with banks on a 50 percent write-off of Greek debt and they also approved a complex mechanism to boost the eurozone's main bailout fund to 1 trillion euro (880 billion pounds).It means that, coupled with an earlier decision to recapitalise vulnerable banks, the summit has delivered on the package it promised.Osborne told the BBC Radio "I think they have made very good progress on the key issues they need to make progress on."I think they got a good agreement last night. Of course, we have now got to get the detail. There is still quite a lot of detail to fill in."The crucial thing this morning is to maintain the momentum, to ensure that we don't see what happened in July, when they agreed another package but then it took months to put it into practice."We have got to maintain the momentum from last night to ensure we turn a good package into something that has actually got all the detail and is going to work in practice." Osborne added "It is going to be a tough road ahead but they are on the right road and it is massively in the British national interest that they sort these problems out, because the instability in the eurozone is having a chilling effect on the British economy."- Questions remain over "whether China is going to be involved, exactly how they are going to operate this new leveraged-up firewall, whether all the private sector are going to be involved in the Greek write-down of debt," said the Chancellor."These are very important questions, but I don't think they should take away from the fact that we are in a much better place this morning than we were yesterday afternoon.The eurozone leaders have grasped the seriousness of the situation.The pressure has paid off in that respect."Now we have got to maintain the pressure to put the package into place, fill in the blank spaces that remain and get the eurozone into a much more stable position and then address the longer-term issues of how we make the eurozone work in the long term." Osborne said later that the pressure Britain applied had "paid off" and the deal last night was "a much better package than anyone had hoped yesterday afternoon"."We have got to maintain the pressure because solving the eurozone crisis would be the biggest single boost the British economy would have this autumn," he said."I think Britain has had real influence in putting pressure on the eurozone to sort out their problems in being round the table as we sort out key elements of it, like strengthening Europe's banks."We are clear that solving the eurozone crisis is in Britain's national interest as well as being in the interests of the euro and Britain is going to continue to play its role in making sure the deal that is done, last night, is actually put into practice in the coming weeks." He added "I think there now will be a discussion about what Europe looks like in the coming years. It is clear the eurozone need to co-ordinate more closely, that's in Britain's interests that they do, because when they don't our economy suffers."But it is an opportunity for Britain to rebalance its relationship with Europe, that's in the coalition agreement of this Government, and Conservative members of it are also very clear it is an opportunity to bring back significant powers to Britain from Brussels."