Europe needs an 'economic government': EU president

“The crisis has revealed our weaknesses,” the former Belgian prime minister says in a statement entitled “A European strategy for growth and jobs,” prepared for an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday.

At present individual European nations “are responsible for the economic strategy of their government. They should do the same at EU level,” Van Rompuy argues in his statement, obtained by AFP on Monday.

“Whether it is called coordination of policies or economic government,” only the European nations working are “capable of delivering and sustaining a common European strategy for more growth and more jobs,” he underlined.

The statement comes with Greece's deficit crisis as the backdrop. Spain, Portugal, Ireland and others are also in budgetary trouble.

The evocation of a European “economic government” will please France which has lobbied in this direction for years without success.

However Germany, Britain and others remain opposed to such a plan which they see as an assault on their fiscal independence.

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