December 5, 2011
Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have come a long way since their walk along the seafront at Deauville in October last year. That meeting produced a compromise that, some hoped, held the promise of resolving the euro zone’s debt crisis.
That deal envisaged tougher monitoring of countries’ budgets and economic policies, and a rapid amendment to the European Union's treaties. Many thought treaty change was unnecessary but went along for Mrs Merkel's sake.
Sounds familiar, no? That is because, a year on, “Merkozy”, as the Germano-French duo are now known, are once again pushing for a toughening-up of controls on national budgets and yet another revision to the treaties.
At a summit in Paris today the two leaders announced they would “force-march” the euro zone towards stricter rules to ensure that a debt crisis could never happen again. They will submit proposals for a new treaty on Wednesday and, if they cannot secure agreement from all 27 EU members, they declared they were ready to push ahead with a separate agreement among the 17 members of the euro zone. That risks isolating Britain, as well as the nine other non-euro states.
Treaty change is no more popular than it was in Deauville, not even among euro-zone members. But at a summit of European leaders in Brussels starting on Thursday the chances are that some form of treaty revision will grudgingly be agreed, because Mrs Merkel wants it so badly.
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