Finance experts from the euro zone have weighed in on comments made by Wolfgang Schaeuble, after the German finance minister warned that debt and liquidity problems could spark the next global crisis.
Euro zone officials told CNBC that they are aware there could feasibly be another financial crisis around the corner, and believe that debt and liquidity should be closely monitored.
"We know that there will be another crisis one day," Klaus Regling, managing director of a crisis resolution mechanism for euro zone countries (called the ESM), told CNBC late Monday. "We all hope it doesn't happen too soon," he added.
Schaeuble, the outgoing German finance minister, warned in an interview with the Financial Times Sunday that there are "new bubbles" emerging from the trillions of dollars that central banks put into the markets as they have tried to revamp inflation levels and the wider economy.
The euro zone has been implementing actions to ensure the area becomes more resilient to economic and financial shocks. At a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday, finance ministers said they want the ESM to be more similar to the International Monetary Fund. The idea is that in the future the ESM and the European Commission will design and monitor bailout programs in the 19-member region. This would mean an official end to the famous Troika — a group of three international organizations that oversaw bailouts for embattled euro zone nations.
"It is true that across European economies, we have seen an increase in liquidity and I would probably share the concerns that we should closely monitor the situation," Harris Georgiades, the finance minister of Cyprus, told CNBC on Tuesday morning. He added that such concerns do not hold for Cyprus, a small euro zone economy that doesn't feature in the European Central Bank's quantitative easing program.
Goodbye to Schaeuble
Tuesday marked the last time that the leading German finance figure, Schaeuble, participated in a European meeting. He has been the longest serving finance minister in the euro zone and he is now set to lead the German parliament.
"Sometimes he was very stubborn but what he had in sight was the medium to long-term interest of all of us who have the euro," Pierre Gramegna, the finance minister of Luxembourg told CNBC, commenting on the role that his German counterpart had during the sovereign debt crisis.
