Euro zone will not survive without fiscal convergence - Le Maire

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany and France need to find a compromise necessary to complete a banking and capital markets union designed to shield the euro zone from future crises, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said in remarks published on Sunday.

He said it was also important that euro zone member states finalise plans to allow their ESM bailout fund to become a backstop for the Single Resolution Fund (SRF) which is meant to finance the winding down of failing banks in the currency union.

"Without this (fiscal) convergence the euro zone will not survive in the long term," Le Maire told the Handelsblatt newspaper. "We discussed long enough and now is the time for decisions."

(Reporting by Joseph Nasr; editing by David Stamp)