EU Employment and Social Affairs Commissioner Laszlo Andor has termed a plan to introduce 'automatic sanctions' on countries that breach eurozone budget rules as a "joke."
In their meeting in Paris on Monday to hammer out a common position at the crucial summit in Brussels later this week to tackle the debt crisis, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel floated the idea of imposing automatic sanctions on member States, whose budget deficit exceeds 3% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The leaders of France and Germany, who have been trying to reassure markets about the single currency, proposed a tough new treaty that envisages stricter fiscal discipline among eurozone members to effectively deal with the debt crisis and restore investor confidence in the common currency bloc.
Merkel and Sarkozy also called for greater checks on the national budget of at least the Eurozone member-states.
In comments posted on Twitter on Tuesday, Andor criticized also the leaders' focus on budget discipline, and their opposition to the idea of the European Central Bank (ECB) issuing Eurobonds as a lender of last resort.
"Fiscal union needs collective, democratic decision-making that can respond to challenges (and) manage aggregate demand," the left-leaning Hungarian economist wrote on Twitter.
In his opinion, "Fiscal union alone will not save the single currency - debt union also is necessary." "Bring in Eurobond and activate ECB," Andor said.
He posted a link to an online article by Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz titled "What can save the euro?".
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