| Heading Towards a New Europe? |
| (2011-12-05) |
| Last updated: 2011-12-06 12:52 EET |
French president Nicolas Sarkozy met German chancellor Angela Merkel in Paris, on Monday, ushering in a week that is crucial for the Eurozone. The EU summit in Brussels, aimed at solving the debt crisis, will be Thursday’s and Friday’s highlight. While some analysts view the meeting as a mere business lunch, lacking a significant purpose, Sarkozy’s assistants consider it essential.
According to Sarkozy, Paris and Berlin are willing to make new proposals to guarantee Europe’s future, threatened by the current crisis. As the French president put it last Thursday, Europe is no longer a choice, but a need; the crisis has revealed its weaknesses and contradictions, and that is why Europe must be rethought and modified.
A day earlier, during an address to the German parliament, Angela Merkel clearly stated her intention to modify European treaties, in order to reform the crisis-hit Eurozone and turn it into a genuine budget union. According to France Press, while Merkel and Sarkozy agree on the EU modification principle, they do not see eye to eye on ways to apply the latter. Sarkozy was initially reserved with respect to treaty modifications, and unwilling to submit Europe to new national referenda, which would have brought memories of the failed 2005 Constitutional Treaty.
The French president later espoused the Germans’ idea, and suggested a new treaty could introduce sanctions for states viewed as tolerant and provide European authorities with more monitoring means for national budgets. According to the French and Germans, these modifications could be applied even if certain countries rejected it by referendum, but only in the Eurozone. Negotiations within the EU unravel under the Americans’ eyes: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is to take part in consultations in Berlin on Tuesday and in Paris on Wednesday
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2025-04-03
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