Frankrijk en Duitsland organiseren conferenties m.b.t. financiële crisis (en)
As the effects of the financial are being increasingly felt in Europe, the leaders of the EU's two biggest nations – German chancellor Angela Merkel i and French president Nicolas Sarkozy i – are both to organise extraordinary meetings aiming to deal with the crisis, according to press reports.
Ms Merkel will call a meeting of the European members – Britain, France, German, Italy, and the European Union (represented by the EU presidency country and the European Central Bank) – of the Group of 20 industrialised nations in Berlin later this month to discuss common action, before the G20 meeting takes place on 2 April in London, the Associated Press writes.
More financial transparency and stricter supervision are among the elements Ms Merkel would like to see.
Earlier, during a gathering of the world's business and political leaders at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos on Friday, she called for the setting up of an international economic body with powers that would allow it to prevent rather than react to crises.
New economic principles should be enshrined in "a new charter for a global economic order," the German chancellor said.
"This may even lead to a UN Economic Council, just as the [UN] Security Council was created after the Second World War," she added.
An extra euro zone meeting?
Meanwhile, Mr Sarkozy is to take an initiative on his own and call for an extraordinary meeting of eurozone countries, according to a report by leading French daily Le Monde in its Sunday edition (1 February).
Mr Sarkozy – who chaired the EU until 31 December, when the bloc's rotating presidency was taken over by the Czech Republic – "judges that the EU has become invisible."
"The Czech EU presidency is judged to be too passive, just like the European Commission, which could be a little bit more imaginative," writes Le Monde.
The meeting, which would aim at establishing "a minimum of budget rigour," could take place in the margin of Ms Merkel's mini-G20 summit in Berlin some time around 22 February.
The timing is a bid to reassure partners – notably Germany - that Mr Sarkozy is not using the crisis to promote his own ambitions, according to the paper.
The issue is likely to come up during a TV address by Mr Sarkozy on Thursday, and discussed in detail when he meets Ms Merkel in Munich on Saturday (7 February).
However, a French presidency spokesman has denied Le Monde's report and told Reuters that an emergency eurozone meeting "is not on the agenda" of the president.
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