THE eurozone debt crisis is not yet over, even if calm appears to have returned to the financial markets, the Bundesbank warned on Tuesday as it set aside billions of euros in new risk provisions.

"Even if reform policies are kept to, the necessary adjustments in the crisis countries are still going to take years," the head of the German central bank, Jens Weidmann, said.

"The growth rates seen before the crisis, which were partially artificially inflated, will not be achievable for a long time," he said.

Mr Weidmann also complained that policymakers in some countries still lacked a clear direction.

"The reform process has stalled in France; in Italy, the elections have cast a question mark over it; and the situation in Cyprus is even less clear," he said.

"The crisis is thus not over, despite the calm that has returned to the financial markets in the interim," the central bank chief insisted.

Turning to Germany, Europe's biggest economy which has managed to escape the recession that many neighbours still find themselves in, Mr Weidmann said: "the German economy was still in good shape ... despite the difficulties in many European partner countries."

Nevertheless, the long-running crisis "represents the most significant risk for the economy in Germany," Mr Weidmann said.

"Only some of the confidence lost as a result of the crisis has been recovered so far," he said.

As the year progressed, growth could be expected to become stronger, but this would depend on the absence of further shocks to confidence, he argued, insisting that it was up to politicians, not Europe's system of central banks to solve the crisis.

The Bundesbank's net profit for last year rose only slightly from a year earlier, because the central bank had decided to set aside billions of euros more in risk provisions, Mr Weidmann said.

The bank's 2012 net profit amounted to 664 million euros ($849.27 million), compared with 643 million euros in 2011.