The leaders of the 16 countries which use the euro vowed to push for tougher rules for their common currency and better regulation of financial markets as they arrived for an emergency summit in Brussels today, according to dpa. Eurozone finance ministers agreed last Sunday on a 110-billion- euro (140-billion-dollar) rescue loan for Greece, the largest in European history. But the euro then plunged as markets feared that states such as Spain and Portugal might also need rescuing. "The Greek crisis shows how interdependent all European Union members are," Finnish premier Matti Vanhanen said ahead of the summit. "This must never happen again. Lessons must be learned." But officials warned that eurozone leaders would have to take tough decisions on immediate action if they wanted to reassure financial markets of their ability to keep the euro stable. "Tonight is about being seen with a level of ambition, taking decisions. It's not about setting up think tanks to come back in a year or two," one EU diplomat said. In a sign of the political haggling going on behind the scenes, officials said that the start of the summit would be delayed by an hour as national leaders looked for support in bilateral meetings. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet were among those who arrived early for face-to-face talks. The summit is expected to call for tougher rules governing euro governments' borrowing. Eurozone states have regularly broken the currency bloc's deficit and debt rules in recent years, and Germany and France in 2005 pushed successfully for them to be watered down. "It's a question of decency: when you agree to do something, people should check that you actually stick to it," Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said. The commission, the EU's executive, is due to make proposals on how to toughen the euro's rules on Wednesday. Leaders are also expected to demand tougher rules for financial markets, especially hedge funds and rating agencies. Many leaders say that the Greek crisis was, in part, caused by "speculators", arguing that the country's recent draconian budget cuts mean that no objective trader could question its stability. "We have done our part. At the same time, there is unprecedented volatility in the world and in the world economy. That is why today's meeting is so important," Greek premier George Papandreou said. Merkel called on the eurozone leaders to "accelerate the regulation of the financial markets," saying, "We have no time left: it has to go quickly." Merkel faces key local elections in Germany's most populous state on Sunday, and the Greek rescue is deeply unpopular there. She is expected to push for tough new rules for the euro. Those rules should be brought in even if it means changing the EU's treaties, Merkel said. In the past she has demanded the right to expel errant euro states, something which current rules do not allow. That is a controversial call, as the EU has only just brought into force its latest set of rules, the Lisbon Treaty, after years of wrangling. Few EU states are keen to launch new treaty talks already. "Treaty changes might come at the end of a debate, but certainly not at the beginning," Faymann said. Euro leaders are also expected to sign off on the Greek rescue package. The country faces a May 19 deadline on a debt it says it cannot repay without new funds. Summit approval of the loan is a formality. It is already in the hands of national parliaments, who scrambled Friday to back it.
