AlQa'dah 25, 1432, Oct 23, 2011, SPA - European Union finance ministers approved tougher capital requirements for banks on Saturday to finalize a solution to the euro crisis in time for a high-profile summit on Sunday. In a press release issued after their 10-hour meeting in Brussels, the ministers would only say that they had "held an exchange of views on bank recapitalization" and that the outcome would be presented to EU leaders at the summit. "We have made real progress and we've come to important decisions on strengthening European banks," British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said as he left the meeting. "That is just one part of the package and obviously there is more work to do." "I think that the finance ministers made progress and that we will thus really be able to achieve our ambitious goals," German Chancellor Angela Merkel added at a parallel pre-summit meeting of the conservative European People's Party outside Brussels. "These are nevertheless difficult deliberations," she was quoted as saying by the German Press Agency "DPA".
