Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said on Tuesday the country was taking necessary steps to get its budgets under control but said the issue was also a European one.

What has become very clear in this affair is that over and above the fiscal problems that any particular country...there are kinds of questions about what kinds of use people make of things like credit derivative swaps, how opaque these markets are, how it's not clear who's trading what and how these can push countries...to the brink, Papaconstantinou said in an interview on CNBC television.

On Monday, Greece's prime minister George Papandreou urged Group of 20 nations to crack down on market speculators and said the action was necessary to ward off risks of another global financial crisis.

(Reporting by Harry Papachristou, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)