(Reuters) - Europe needs to balance cutting its debt with measures to stimulate growth, the region's top economics official said on Saturday, as austerity threatens to drag the bloc into its second recession in three years.

During the financial crisis, the message from Brussels has been that struggling euro zone countries must cut their budget deficits and carry out structural reforms to increase competitiveness.

However, with unemployment at record highs and some peripheral countries already deep in recession, Europe must turn its attention to ways to stimulate economic growth to lessen the blow of austerity measures, Olli Rehn, Europe's commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said.

"Fiscal consolidation, while necessary (needs to be) done in a growth-friendly and differentiated way, in order to strike a balance between necessary fiscal consolidation and concerns for growth," he said in a speech at the Free University of Brussels.