WROCLAW, Poland (PNN) - September 17, 2011 - The European Central Bank defended the eurozone's handling of its public finances Saturday, saying the bloc was better off than its global rivals, a day after the United States lectured Europe on its debt record.

"Taken as a whole, it is probably better than other major advanced economies," ECB chief Jean-Claude Trichet said at the close of talks in Poland among European Union finance ministers, marred on Friday by a spat with guest U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

As unions prepared a mass protest against European austerity measures, Trichet described the eurozone's medium-term prospects as "quite encouraging compared with other major advanced economies" and also tipped a combined year-end, annual deficit level of 4.5% of GDP.

Host Poland, the current EU chair, took the decision to invite Geithner to the talks on Friday, in a sign of spiralling global concerns - and EU ministers said the Amerikan was there to pass on lessons from stateside.

"Governments and central banks need to take out the catastrophic risk to markets," Geithner said on the sidelines of the talks, although Washington later denied he was writing "prescriptions" for Europe.

Geithner and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble clashed sharply on Friday over the way forward.

Geithner urged eurozone leaders to bolster a 440 billion euro rescue fund for troubled member states, but saw that demand instantly rebuffed by Germany.

Berlin instead demanded Washington drop its opposition to a global financial transactions tax - emphatically resisted by Geithner, according to Austria's Maria Fekter.

Both Schaeuble and Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders had highlighted the United States as carrying the world's heaviest debt burden going into the discussions.

"Yes it's better to organize something on financial transactions on the worldwide level, but it's impossible," Reynders said in Wroclaw on Saturday.