Europe has made an "impressive effort" to return itself to a sustainable fiscal path, which is the only way to exit the sovereign debt crisis plaguing the continent "once and for all", according to Christian Noyer, governor of the Banque de France.

Noyer, who made the comments at a lunch in New York on April 23, pointed out that the Portuguese fiscal deficit has fallen from around 10% in 2009 to around 6% last year. At the same time, the Italian deficit has declined from 5.4% to 3.9% and the