German lawmaker vows to defend EU budget plan

Europe's budget treaty must remain intact if Socialist Francois Hollande is elected president of France, a leader of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative CDU party said Saturday. "The budget treaty must not be relaxed ... our partners see things this way as well," Christian Democratic Union parliamentary president Volker Kauder told the regional daily Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung. Hollande, the front-running candidate in Sunday's French election, has said he intends to renegotiate a budget treaty approved by 25 of the European Union's 27 member states in 2011, to put a greater emphasis on growth. Hollande's position has led to a marked realignment by many EU leaders who had backed calls for budget discipline as unemployment and growth become hot topics across the continent. The EU has already been working on plans to encourage growth in countries with high unemployment, like Greece and Spain, with the core question one of how to best promote growth while still reducing excessive debt in Europe. "When we speak about growth prospects for Greece and Spain, that is not new," Kauder noted. "The chancellor has always said clearly that she wants to use existing EU funds more widely. "There will not be new public programmes to boost activity, such as the German social democrats and Francois Hollande are calling for," he concluded. Germany, the biggest donor to European Union structural funds, has been criticised by partners within the 17-nation eurozone as Berlin resists calls to increase borrowing, for example via common eurozone bonds. Kauder argued that using fiscal stimulus to promote growth "could only be financed by new debt. That would be exactly the wrong signal to send to financial markets. "That would only reinforce the eurozone debt crisis once again," he said.