Finance ministers of the 15-nation eurozone vowed yesterday to protect all big banks from breaking down in the finance crisis.

"We have agreed that no financial institution of systemic importance should be allowed to fail," said Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads the group of finance ministers from the 15 countries that share the euro.

"We will all take the necessary measures to ensure the stability of the financial system," he told reporters after a meeting with his eurozone colleagues.

The financial crisis, which originated in the United States, has deepened in Europe in the most recent weeks, with several European banks falling prey to the global credit crunch, prompting EU governments to save their banks by injecting large amount of money or even nationalizing them.

In a bid to calm savers' concern about their money in the banks, several EU countries raced to increase their guarantee of private bank deposits.

But all those emergency measures failed to contain the crisis so far. Panic swept through the European financial sector earlier Monday as stock exchanges in Paris, London and Berlin all registered massive falls.