EU leaders gather ahead of crucial G20 meet
European leaders met today to set out their stall for sweeping financial reforms ahead of an international conference in the United States next week.
A summit in Brussels said such reforms had to be endorsed at the crucial gathering in Washington on November 15 of the so-called G20 group of leading industrialised and emerging economies.
Only four of the EU nations – Britain, France, Italy, and Germany – are in the G20, but today’s summit was designed to ensure that anything the four sign up to in Washington is already backed by the other 23 EU leaders.
A statement said EU unity had helped with financial crisis responses so far and now it was time to reform the entire global financial system.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said decisions taken on the global economy in the next few months will reshape the world for a decade or more.
Brown told a press conference: “We have been meeting at a decisive moment for the world economy and the decisions we will make in the coming months will reshape our world for a decade or more.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who called the summit, said nothing short of a new era of economic governance was needed – and he rejected German concerns that he was pushing for a European economic policy.
“If by ’economic governance’ you are saying that I am calling for a federal Europe, that is not what I’m saying,” Mr Sarkozy told journalists.
This afternoon’s declaration stated: “The international summit on 15 November must pave the way for reform of the international financial system: Europe must play a major part in it.”
Over a three-hour lunch in Brussels the EU leaders reviewed their recent success in stabilising European banks and charted the next steps – including new powers for the IMF, tougher regulation and supervision of all financial sectors, and an “early-warning system” to spot future financial risks well in advance.
The document declared: “No financial institution, no market segment and no jurisdiction must escape proportionate and adequate regulation or at least oversight.”
The EU wants better transparency in financial markets, measures to curb “excessive risk-taking”, and the creation of “supervisory colleges” to oversee the major international financial institutions.
Almost all the demands have been repeated by EU leaders in a series of crisis meetings in the last month, but the job now is to carry them through to become part of a global creed endorsed by world powers as distinct as the United States, India and Australia.
