NOURIEL ROUBINI WARNS: The Eurozone could break apart

• Spain poses a greater threat than Greece to the integrity of the Eurozone, he says

American economics teacher Nouriel Roubini claims he was never this pessimistic when it comes to the future of the EMU, and he says that Spain poses an increasingly greater threat to its continued existence.

"Down the line, not this year or two years from now, we could have a breakup of the monetary union", said Roubini during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, quoted by Radio Bloomberg: "It"s a rising risk".

Roubini"s concern contrasts with the view of European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet who recently said it would be "absurd" to imagine that the Eurozone could splinter. Speculation of a breakup has mounted in financial markets as Greece struggles to cut the continent"s biggest budget deficit and countries from Spain to Ireland face rising debt burdens.

Roubini said that even though Greece is everyone"s focus, it is Spain which may eventually pose a bigger threat to the euro zone because it"s the region"s fourth-largest economy and has higher unemployment and weaker banks. Spain"s jobless rate is more than 19 percent, almost twice the EU average.

"If Greece goes under that"s a problem for the euro zone, but if Spain goes under it"s a disaster."

Roubini said: "The euro zone could drift essentially with a bifurcation, with a strong center and a weaker periphery and eventually some countries might exit the monetary union. This is the very first test of the single currency bloc".