EU: French president Jacques Chirac and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder have made a joint call for a loosening of euro zone rules to encourage growth.
The two leaders also called on Syria to fully withdraw from Lebanon immediately, in a joint statement issued after informal talks yesterday in Mr Schröder's birthplace of Blomberg.
"Growth in Europe is still not yet what one could be satisfied with," said Mr Schröder. "We take it that the EU presidency will succeed in pushing through a reform of the Stability and Growth Pact that will be more growth-oriented than was the case in the past."
Mr Chirac agreed, saying the pact "must not be purely technocratic, it must be political", leaving room for spending in special circumstances and "investment and research spending", which he described as "the riches of tomorrow".
"There is spending and there is spending," said the French president. "Every country has particular events. The development in the new federal states is such a particular burden."
The pact obliges the 12 euro zone countries to keep their public deficits below 3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP); France and Germany lead the way in breaches of the pact in this regard.
The two leaders said they agreed that contributions to the EU budget from 2007 should not exceed 1 per cent of GDP.
Mr Schröder said he would present the Franco-German positions, which Mr Chirac described as "seamless", later today to Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, the current holders of the EU presidency.
Their three-hour visit included a walkabout in Blomberg, greeting locals in the town where Mr Schröder grew up, and was in stark contrast to the recent visit of US president George Bush which paralysed the whole Frankfurt region and shut down the city of Mainz for a day.