Amid fears of a deepening financial crisis in the euro zone, the head of the European Union in the country gave assurances on Tuesday that leaders in Brussels are effectively managing the situation and will not affect the Philippines and Southeast Asian trade partners.

Ambassador Guy Ledoux, head of the EU Delegation to the Philippines, said the EU, considered as the world’s biggest single market, does not see a recession, despite Greece’s three-year financial crisis and the downgrading of countries in the euro zone, except Germany.

Ledoux, in an interview with the BusinessMirror, said that, indeed, the EU’s economic growth suffered a decline from 1.9 percent in 2010 to 1.6 percent in 2011 and an even lower forecast of 0.5 percent in 2012.

“I must admit this is not a high level of growth, but we’re not forecasting a recession,” Ledoux said. Recession is when a country suffers two consecutive years of negative economic growth, he said.

Ledoux also said economic leaders at the EU headquarters in Brussels are currently taking effective measures to address the financial crisis  “through a consolidated, enforced good  governance on the member economies and at the EU level.”

He also said it was important for the EU, composed of 27 mostly rich economies, to stick to the “fundamentals” in managing the economic crisis. These include measures, such as reducing budget deficit, now down to 4 percent compared to US government’s 10 percent, and managing global level of debt.

The Philippines exports major agriculture and fishery products to the EU’s big economies, such as Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and United Kingdom.

Europe is also home to more than one million overseas Filipino workers, mostly in Spain, Italy and France; close to 200,000 nurses are in Britain.

Ledoux said 75 percent of all coconut oil imported by the EU comes from the Philippines, which amounts to P 21 billion. Fishery products also account for the Philippines’s export to EU with a total of P7.5 billion and tropical fruits exports worth P 4.8 billion.

The Philippines is also eyeing a free-trade agreement with the EU to expand more trade in its members and  to send more Filipino skilled workers .