GERMAN Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that it would be a disaster for both Europe and the United Kingdom if the country were to leave the European Union (EU), and therefore “Brexit” would be avoided.

    “It would not only be a disaster for the United Kingdom it would be a disaster for Europe. Therefore we will avoid this,” Schaeuble told a financial conference Friday.

    “It’s up to Britain to decide,” he said, adding that Germany would be supportive in efforts to try and keep it in the bloc.

    British Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU and then hold a vote by the end of 2017 on whether to stay in it or leave.

    The possibility of Britain leaving the EU sometime in the future also worries European bankers a great deal more than the prospect that Greece might be on its way out soon.

    London is home to the Europe’s biggest financial center and regarded as central to EU plans for a capital markets union.

    Britain’s inclusion in the EU is more important to the bloc’s long-term future than whatever happens to Greece, bankers attending a financial industry conference said, even as last-ditch talks aimed at keeping Greece solvent and avoiding a possible exit from the eurozone rumble on in Brussels.

    “To me, that (Brexit) is the bigger potential nightmare,” Tim Adams, president of the Institute of International Finance (IIF), said at the organization’s European meeting in Frankfurt. (SD-Agencies)