European Union leaders are tussling over how much power they want to cede to central authorities during a summit meeting focused on how to ensure their debt crisis never repeats itself.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing a proposal that the European Union's monetary affairs commissioner should become an enforcer of the bloc's budget rules - including the power to refuse member countries' proposed spending and tax plans and send them back for changes. Germany hopes that having a "budget czar" - a move that's been bandied about for months - will help keep Europe from repeating past mistakes by stopping governments from overspending and needing expensive bailouts. But some countries, like France, are wary of handing control over their finances to unelected officials in a foreign capital.
"I am astonished that, no sooner does someone make a progressive proposal ... the cry immediately comes that this won't work, Germany is isolated, we can't do it," Merkel said in Parliament ahead of the summit.
President Francois Hol-lande of France - increasingly the counterpoint to Germany's weight in the EU - brushed off the suggestion as simply not on the table at this summit. But Hollande is backing another plan that would also see at least members of the euro-zone - the 17 countries that use the euro as their currency - hand over a great deal of sovereignty.
"The only decision we have to take, to confirm, is putting in place a banking union by the end of the year," he said. "The first step is a banking supervisor."
Hollande wants the bank supervisor in place because leaders have agreed that, once there is supervision, struggling financial institutions will be able to tap Europe's bailout fund directly.
That would be a huge relief to countries like Spain, which are facing the prospect of taking on enormous debts - and worrying markets in the process - in order to bail out banks.
Some European governments - including Germany, the Netherlands and Finland - have tried to put the brakes on any decision about a banking union.
