Meanwhile, the euro tumbled to another 16-month low against the US dollar, falling under the US$1.27 mark and Italian borrowing costs rose above the 7 percent barrier that many economists consider to be unsustainable.
Also on Merkel and Sarkozy’s plate at the lunchtime meeting is Hungary, after the IMF and EU officials broke off talks over a possible credit line due to concerns over the independence of the central bank.
The tete-a-tete is the first of a series of high-level meetings to prepare the EU summit.
After Monti’s visit to Berlin tomorrow, a three-way France-Germany-Italy summit is scheduled to take place in Rome on Friday next week, three days before a key meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels.
RSS