Monday, October 24, 2011

As EuroSummit ends with no deal, treaty change is back on EU agenda

Preparations should be made for European treaty change according to the conclusions from today's (23 October) EU summit, following a lengthy dispute over the relative powers of the eurozone and wider EU 27 countries. European leaders meeting in Brussels were unwilling to commit to any sort of far-reaching treaty change - given the requirements for domestic referenda this entails. But Germany insisted that provisions for "limited treaty change" were included in the conclusions.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants such changes to beef up the disciplinary procedures governing eurozone countries and to ensure that they retain their domestic finances within sharply prescribed criteria. Merkel favours clauses enabling eurozone countries failing to keep their national debt within a 3% cap of gross domestic product to be liable to court censure under EU law. She also wants to explore the idea of a central European finance ministry, another scheme that might require treaty change.

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