The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said today that Europe needed to more closely follow its existing budget rules, rather than look at changing its treaties, according to dpa. At a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Barroso reacted to a German suggestion that the EU needed to re-think the bloc's treaties, to make sure member states did not exceed deficit limits in future. "The problems we have had were not the result of non-compliance with the rules. We need to reinforce those rules," he said. At a meeting Thursday with EU President Herman van Rompuy, Merkel repeated her view that changes to the so-called Growth and Stability Pact, by which member states must keep their deficits within set limits, were necessary in order to maintain budget discipline in the 16-member eurozone. Other EU members have reacted with dismay to the German suggestion, in view of the torturous process only recently completed to bring the Lisbon Treaty into law. An EU summit called for Thursday is set to debate both the measures to reduce deficits within the eurozone, and proposals to severely limit market practices such as naked short selling by the end of 2012. Merkel, however, appeared to soften her position expressed just a day before. Speaking of her wish to see the German model of the so-called "debt brake," by which states' borrowing limits are written into their constitutions, Merkel said that the Maastrict Treaty - which wrote the rules of Europe's monetary union - was in essence sufficient. "The question is more, how would such a rule get into national law," she said. Barroso expressed confidence that the EU summit next week would find a common purpose on the questions of the supervision of euro member-state finances as well as on the question of deficits. "I believe a consensus is emerging," he said.
