BRUSSELS (AP) — Germany on Tuesday defended the policy of tightening the budgets in a number of European countries despite a blunt warning from a top European Union official that the 27-nation bloc’s austerity drive “has reached its limits.”

“If we were to give up the policy of consolidating the budgets in Europe, if we were to fall back to the old policy of taking on new debt, then we would cement mass unemployment in Europe for many years to come,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Tuesday in Brussels.