The leaders of France and Germany unveiled wide-reaching plans on Tuesday for closer euro zone integration, including deficit limits and biannual summits, but said joint euro bonds could only be a longer-term option, Reuters reported. Under heavy pressure to restore confidence in the euro zone following a dramatic market slump, President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel stopped short of increasing the euro zone's EFSF rescue fund but vowed to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in defending the single currency. Their message was that the focus should be on further economic integration rather than signing bailout cheques. In a further rap to financial market players, whose panic-selling this month wiped some $4 trillion off global stocks and sparked a temporary ban in Europe on short-selling, the two leaders also proposed taxing financial transactions. In plans to be sent on Wednesday to European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, the two leaders want a president to be elected to represent the euro zone and twice-yearly meetings of the leaders of the embattled 17-nation bloc. "We have exactly the same position on euro bonds," Sarkozy told a joint news conference with Merkel after their talks. "Euro bonds can be imagined one day, but at the end of the European integration process, not at the beginning," he said. The joint proposals were still ambitious, given Germany's past reticence on ideas like institutionalising regular summits of euro zone leaders, and respond to criticism that market confidence in the euro zone has been undermined by a cacophony of differing policymaking voices in recent months. -- SPA
