Eu Official Says Budget Pact Ready For Signing

The European Unions monetary affairs commissioner, Yves- hibault de Silguy, said on Friday the blocs so-called stability pact would be formally adopted at an Amsterdam summit next week.

He told French radio the pact, a code for tight budgets among nations joining a single currency, would include extra resolutions on employment and policy coordination, addressing a key demand of Frances new Socialist government.

The government, which took power last week after an upset victory in June 1 elections, stunned its European partners on Monday by saying it wanted more time to think about the budget stability framework hammered out in Dublin last year. It had pledged during the campaign to redirect Europe towards jobs.

 

The text that was adopted in Dublin as well as two other very important texts which are the new European monetary system and the legal status of the euro ... these texts will be finally adopted in Amsterdam, de Silguy told Radio Monte Carlo.

We will add parallel to these texts at the request notably of France, but supported by the Commission, resolutions which on the one hand give more content to the provisions that exist in the (Maastricht) treaty on employment, and secondly will also give more content to what we call the coordination of economic policy; that is to say putting in place a sort of economic pillar at the heart of economic and monetary union to allow member states to conduct economic policy in a much more coordinated, close and concerted way, de Silguy said.

European Union leaders are due to hold a summit in Amsterdam on Monday and Tuesday next week.