EU Leaders Hold Emergency Huddle

Posted on Oct 26, 2011

bbc.co.uk

EU-mergency: Germany’s Angela Merkel takes stock of the situation in Brussels on Wednesday.

Greece is hanging by a thread, and its European neighbors scrambled to avoid a similar fate, and stave off even harder times for the Greeks, by holding a summit in Brussels on Wednesday. Here’s a look at a couple of action items on the busy agenda for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and other leaders from the eurozone.  —KA

BBC:

The summit has been discussing a number of proposals reportedly agreed on by EU officials at the weekend, including:

European banks must raise 106bn euros (£92bn; $147bn) in new capital to shield them against possible losses to indebted countries
The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) - the single currency’s 440bn-euro bailout fund - is to be given more firepower, although it is not clear how this will be achieved]
Lenders to Greece will be asked to agree to much deeper losses than the 21% write-off currently on the table.

BBC economics correspondent Andrew Walker says tackling the weakness of banks is the area where most progress has been made.

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