Chancellor George Osborne has said he is "optimistic" a solution will be found to the Spanish banking crisis.
Mr Osborne said that the eurozone was working hard to come up with a plan to stabilise Spain's beleaguered banks.
However he said that resolving the problems in Spain would not end the crisis in the eurozone and he called for permanent measures to stabilise the single currency bloc.
"I am optimistic that people are working hard on a solution and a solution, I think, is coming. They have identified the problem. I know they are working very hard on an imminent solution," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
"I think one of the mistakes we have made over the last couple of years as a world is to assume that if you just get through the latest eurozone problem, the crisis is solved. It is not.
"Just bringing some stability to the Spanish banking system is not going to end the instability in euro. There need to be more permanent changes to make this currency work."
Osborne said that monetary union also required a banking union in the eurozone - although he stressed this would not involve Britain.
"The banks have been one of the weak links in all of this. The eurozone have tolerated weak, under-capitalised banks for too long," he said.
"Part of running a single currency - following what I have called the remorseless logic of having a single currency - is that you have something more akin to a banking union or a financial union.
"So that, for example, Spanish depositors have confidence that they can leave their money in the Spanish banks, so that, for example, there are common funds to re-capitalise banks, so for example, in return for all that there is tougher pan-eurozone supervision."
However he stressed that if that were to happen, Britain would require safeguards to ensure the UK financial sector was protected.
"There will have to be safeguards, there will have to be conditions to protect Britain's most important industry," he said.
The chancellor's comments came as David Cameron flies to Berlin for talks with chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merkel is coming under growing pressure to put German taxpayers' money behind measures such as "eurobonds" which would spread the burden of debt from ailing economies like Greece among the 17 single currency members.