EU Commission: we cannot allow the EU to fragment

 Deeper euro zone integration is necessary to face the challenges of the sovereign debt crisis, but the process must not create any divisions in the euro zone or the wider European Union, the European Commission said on Thursday.

"A slowdown of the deeper integration of euro area is not an option either, given the challenges that we face. But this is an open process, not an exclusive or divisive process," Commission spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen told a regular briefing.

She quoted a speech by Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso late on Wednesday, who said that a break-up of the euro zone or the European Union would halve EU GDP in an initial phase.

For Germany alone, the cost of such a split would be a 3% economic contraction and a loss of 1 million jobs if the euro area were to shrink to a few core member countries.

"It is a huge cost... We cannot allow the euro zone or the European Union to fragment because it would be very much against the interest of the European people as a whole," she said.