Eurozone needs joint budget to help members in crisis - ESM's Regling

BERLIN (Reuters) - The euro zone should have a limited joint fiscal capability to support individual member states in case of a sudden crisis, the head of the European Stability Mechanism was quoted as saying ahead of a French-German summit on Thursday.

Asked if Chancellor Angela Merkel should back French President Emmanuel Macron's call to give the euro zone a single finance minister and a common budget, Klaus Regling told German business daily Handelsblatt that he did not want to lecture Merkel.

"But I think that we need a limited fiscal capacity in the euro zone in order to support single member states in case of sudden crisis," said Regling, a German official.

Such a "rainy day fund" should have the volume of an equivalent of one to two percent of the euro zone's gross domestic product (GDP), Regling added. This would mean roughly 100 to 200 billion euros ($115 billion to $229 billion).

($1 = 0.8732 euros)

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber; Editing by Paul Carrel)