. . . the meeting of the eurozone heavyweights
Next Friday leaders of the 17 eurozone countries gather in Brussels to discuss reforming their collective bailout fund, the scope and scale of which have them deeply divided.
Attending governments will attempt to negotiate a package of economic measures, such as a future permanent bailout mechanism for countries in financial difficulty, which they hope will contain the region’s debt crisis.
The plan is to reach consensus so the deal can be signed off at another key meeting in Brussels, on March 24th and 25th.
In the past, however, the regional bloc has taken years to establish similar reform measures, and speculation that they will fail to agree terms has put European financial markets under renewed pressure recently.
From an Irish perspective, the meeting may determine whether incoming taoiseach Enda Kenny can extract better EU-IMF bailout terms and preserve Ireland’s contested corporate-tax regime – meaning core election pledges could be tested almost immediately.
German chancellor Angela Merkel and Greek prime minister George Papandreou have claimed that a co-ordinated policy will calm the markets, but the eurozone-only attendance has troubled countries such as the Czech Republic and Poland, which fear being excluded from key decisions that could affect them.
