European leaders meet amid euro-zone worries

European leaders meet amid euro-zone worries

BERLIN (Reuters) - European leaders met in Berlin on Sunday to agree a common stance on overhauling global financial rules but their summit risked being overshadowed by concerns about the fragility of euro zone and eastern European states.
The host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, wants the meeting to reaffirm a commitment to free trade, stronger regulation of financial markets and coordinated action to shield the bloc from the worst downturn in the postwar era.
European countries would then take this message of unity to a broader summit of G20 nations in London on April 2, showing they are serious about delivering on an action plan agreed last November in Washington to combat the financial crisis and guard against future meltdowns.
But new tensions within the single currency bloc and the financial woes of European Union members to the east have cast a cloud over the meeting in the German capital.
Ahead of the gathering, the IMF threw its weight behind the idea of a common European bond to alleviate pressure on euro states such as Ireland and Greece that are being forced to pay hefty premiums over stronger bloc members to finance their debt.

(Dutch officials arriving in Berlin, source video NOS.nl)

Europe wants fast action from world finance summit

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who like French President Nicolas Sarkozy has urged an overhaul of the world financial bodies established after World War Two, said that reversing the global economic slowdown was just as vital.
"It is not the right time for short-term cuts in investment and public spending," the spokesman said. "There is now an emerging consensus across the developed world of the need to use fiscal policy in tandem with economic policy to support economic growth, and this is a point that the prime minister will be making (in Brussels)."

Redefining Bretton Woods?
As Ngaire Woods, of Oxford University, argued in a paper published in June, "the problem for the IMF and the World Bank is that their governance structures are locked in the past." The World Bank is headquartered in Washington, home of the world's largest debtor, she argues, yet "today global development finance is increasingly accessed directly from private sources and emerging economies such as China, the Gulf States, India and Brazil."