No new stimulus

European finance ministers said they have no plans to bolster their fiscal stimulus packages even as they warned that rising unemployment risks creating major problems.

"We're heading toward a social crisis; there will be an unemployment crisis," Luxembourg Finance Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said in Brussels late yesterday after leading talks of counterparts from the 16-nation continental region. "Even so, we do not believe euro-zone states should be adding to the economic programs they have decided upon."

The ministers gathered hours after the European Commission, the European Union's executive body, warned that the euro area will suffer its deepest recession since World War II this year and predicted the unemployment rate will reach the highest on record in 2010.