EU leaders want concrete results at G20

BERLIN, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- European leaders have called for wide-reaching results at the upcoming Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for concrete action and results at the Sept. 24-25 G20 summit in Pittsburgh -- the third emergency meeting since the Lehman Brothers demise that sparked the global financial crisis.

Merkel said Friday in Berlin the Pittsburgh meeting "must yield concrete results that go well beyond" those that came out of the previous summits.

"We want targets, agendas and commitments," Sarkozy said after a meeting with Brown in Paris earlier this week. Brown added, "The coming week is a vital week for the world economy."

The three leaders earlier this month called for global rules to regulate financial markets, hedge funds and bonus payments to bankers.

Merkel Friday in a news conference in Berlin reiterated those calls, saying that a tighter control of banks was necessary so that "states can't be blackmailed" by large, interconnected financial institutions. Governments in Europe and the United States have had to bail out several troubled banks with taxpayers' money, have spent billions on economic recovery packages and are now facing huge budget deficits.

The German economy, Europe's largest, will contract by 5 percent or even 6 percent, Merkel said Friday. "This is much more than we have ever seen in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany," she said.

Leaders in Europe feel that unregulated capitalism and greedy bankers have sparked the crisis. Merkel and Sarkozy are ready to put a cap on bonus payments to bankers, a move leaders in Britain and the United States feel goes too far.

EU Monetary Affairs chief Joaquin Almunia nevertheless believes that a bonus payment limit is a realistic target for the summit.

"It is possible to fix limits, conditions. ... I think this is the most likely outcome of the G20 meeting next week," he told Spanish radio station Cadena Ser.

The EU has in the past also lobbied for a global tax on financial market deals. But Peer Steinbrueck, the German finance minister, said Friday it is unlikely that such a model could be drafted as early as next week.

The G20 includes the world's biggest industrial powers, including fast-growing economies such as China, India and Brazil.