PARIS (MNI) – France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s
Chancellor Angela Merkel, in an urgent-sounding 3-page letter to top EU
officials, expressed their mutual commitment to Eurozone stability and
said that safeguarding it was the responsibility of every EMU member
state.
They said another crisis like the current one must not be allowed
to happen, and urged a number of measures, including greater economic
governance, tighter surveillance of national budgets, stricter sanctions
for states that flout the EU fiscal rules, as well as tighter regulation
of financial markets, institutions and rating agencies.
“The euro is a major achievement of the European Union. It has been
greatly beneficial to all member states of the Eurozone. We are
completely attached to preserving the solidity, stability and unity of
the Eurozone,” Merkel and Sarkozy wrote to European Commission President
Jose Manuel Barroso and EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy in the
letter, which was published verbatim by French daily Le Monde.
They went on to say that, “the crisis has shown that all member
states are responsible for the stability of the Eurozone as whole and
the solidity of its single currency. For the success of the economic and
monetary union to continue it is not enough to respond to this crisis.
We must go beyond that and draw the lessons, taking all needed measures
to prevent a crisis like this one from happening again.”
“First and foremost,” they added, “we must reinforce the economic
governance of the Eurozone.”
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–Paris Newsroom, +331-42-71-55-40; bwolfson@marketnews.com
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