The Telegraph reports that British prime minister David Cameron has launched an attack on Europe over its failure to deal with the financial crisis and warned that the euro will not be a success.

The paper says that Cameron, speaking at the world economic forum, said the euro lacks the qualities of a successful single currency and said that an EU financial transaction tax would destroy half a million jobs.

His comments are unlikely to smooth over Franco-German tensions with the UK following French president Nicolas Sarkozy's accusation that Cameron was "interfering" in the debate on the future of the euro.