Leaders hold euro crisis meeting

Eurozone leaders held a crisis summit in Brussels on Friday night to discuss the state of the euro, floundering in the face of Greece’s debt problems.

The summit was originally called to sign off on a €110 billion (SFr155 billion) bailout for Greece and draw lessons for the future.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged European leaders to sharpen the core rules underpinning the euro to avoid debt crises like the one which has pushed Greece to the brink of bankruptcy and threatened other fragile eurozone nations.

Merkel added the eurozone leaders should also consider changes to the 1992 treaty that laid the groundwork for the shared currency.

A French official who could not be named said no completely new decisions were expected from Friday’s meeting but that some emergency measures could be discussed.

Earlier, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso met with European Union President Herman Van Rompuy to assess the financial fall-out of recent days which has financial markets testing the euro’s robustness. The euro fell to $1.25 on Thursday, its lowest in 14 months, but recovered to $1.27 later.

Merkel also spoke on Friday with President Barack Obama, who said he supported the effort to deal with the financial crisis in Europe.

Along with the eurozone meeting, the G-7 finance ministers were holding a teleconference Friday on the crisis.

swissinfo.ch and agencies