Speaking in Berlin where John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan gave rousing Cold War speeches, Obama urged Russia to help build on the “New START” treaty that requires both countries to cut stockpiles of deployed nuclear weapons to 1,550 each by 2018.

“After a comprehensive review I have determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one third,” he said.

“I intend to seek negotiated cuts with Russia to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures,” Obama said at the Brandenburg Gate, which once stood alongside the Berlin Wall that divided the communist east and the capitalist west.

Obama’s vision of a “world without nuclear weapons” set out in a speech in Prague in 2009, three months into his presidency, earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. But his mixed results so far have fuelled criticism that the prize may have been premature.

Experts said reducing the nuclear arsenal makes strategic and economic sense. But Mark Fitzpatrick at the International Institute for Strategic Studies said Obama faces major obstacles “including a recalcitrant Russia and a reluctant Senate”.

President Vladimir Putin, speaking in St. Petersburg minutes before Obama’s speech, made no direct comment but voiced concern about U.S. missile defenses and high-precision weapons.

Moscow sees nuclear deterrents as the safeguard of national security. It is worried about the West’s superior conventional weapons and NATO plans for a missile defense system in Europe.

“High-precision conventional weapons systems are being actively developed … States possessing such weapons strongly increase their offensive potential,” said Putin.

The chief of the Russian military’s general staff appears reluctant to negotiate a new nuclear deal and Russian foreign policy expert Fyodor Lukyanov described Obama’s desire to “go to zero globally” as totally unacceptable in Russia.

REPUBLICANS OPPOSED

Obama will also target reductions in U.S. and Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and host a summit in 2016 on securing nuclear materials and preventing nuclear terrorism. He hosted such a meeting in 2010, a second was held in Seoul in 2012 and Obama will attend a third in The Hague next year.

He met the Russian president this week at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, where they signed a new agreement on securing nuclear material left over from the Cold War, replacing the 1992 Nunn-Lugar agreement that expired on Monday.

That was “the kind of constructive, cooperative relationship that moves us out of a Cold War mindset”, Obama said afterwards.

Early initiatives of Obama’s presidency led to the New START treaty plus measures to bolster the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a new effort to secure nuclear materials worldwide, but that push has flagged in the face of political realities.

But Obama said the United States and Russia were on track to cut deployed nuclear warheads “to their lowest levels since the 1950s” and said a framework was being forged to counter what he called Iran and North Korea’s “nuclear weaponisation”.

Iran denies it is seeking nuclear weapons.

He also wants to see negotiations on a treaty to end the production of fissile materials for weapons.

Experts and advocacy groups described Obama’s initiative as “long overdue” and the reduction targets as modest.

“The one-third cuts outlined by the President are but 200-300 warheads fewer than the United States was prepared to agree to during the New START negotiations four years ago,” said Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association in Washington.

“The U.S. could have gone much lower and maintained deterrence,” said Jon Wolfsthal, a former special advisor to the vice president on nuclear security and non proliferation. He saw little chance of success in the face of political opposition.

“Our experience has been that nuclear arsenals – other than ours – are on the rise,” said Jim Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, pointing to Iran and North Korea.

“A country whose conventional military strength has been weakened due to budget cuts ought not to consider further nuclear force reductions while turmoil in the world is growing.”

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Alexei Anishchuk, Fredrik Dahl and Timothy Heritage; Writing by Stephen Brown; Editing by Elizabeth Piper and Ralph Boulton)

Berlin has criticized Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s heavy handed response to two weeks of protests that began over a redevelopment project in an Istanbul park.

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle urged Erdogan this week to uphold “the spirit of European values”.

A senior EU official said Germany was reluctant to open a new negotiating area with Turkey on regional policy, one of the bloc’s main spending programs for new members, as expected at the next tentatively scheduled ministerial talks on June 26.

“That’s what we have heard from the Germans,” the official said. Another EU diplomat said Germany had not officially said it would block the opening of the so-called negotiating chapter, “but we know this is an issue in Berlin, the political developments in Turkey.”

German Foreign Ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke said there was “no direct link between the events we are now witnessing and the technical process of opening further chapters on accession”.

But he told a regular government news conference: “There are still many technical points that in our view need clearing up. This will take time.

“Of course, the Turkish accession talks take place in a political context,” he said, adding that the negotiations that began in 2005 were “a very, very long process” which was bound to take a lot longer.

EU politicians are divided on whether it would help or harm Turkey’s democratization process to interrupt accession talks.

The European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee head Elmar Brok, from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, said it would be wrong to reward Erdogan by reopening talks.

Germany’s centre-left opposition, which supports Turkish EU membership, said delaying the talks would be a blow to Turkish democracy.

The EU official said Berlin was moving in the opposite direction to the executive European Commission, which believed that “more than ever, if we want to have dialogue and stability coming back in Taksim Square, there is a need to push for the negotiations for new chapters being open”.

Turkey complains about Berlin’s lack of support for its EU aspirations and accuses Europe of hypocrisy for stringing out the talks without full membership in mind. It cites Merkel’s preference for a “privileged partnership” rather than membership.

After Erdogan warned in February that making Turkey wait so long was “unforgivable”, Merkel backed new talks – but said she remains skeptical about Turkish EU membership.

Turkey’s EU talks have also been slowed by an intractable dispute over the divided island of Cyprus, an EU member, and by French opposition, although Paris has eased its stance since Socialist President Francois Hollande replaced Nicolas Sarkozy last year.

Ankara has completed only one of the 35 policy chapters that every candidate nation must conclude. Some others are blocked by EU concerns about Turkish human rights and freedom of speech.

Erdogan has warned that the EU would lose Turkey if it was not granted full membership by 2023.

(Additional reporting by Justyna Pawlak in Brussels; Writing by Stephen Brown; Editing by Paul Taylor)

With 100 days to go until the Sept. 22 election when Merkel
will seek a third term, the struggling Social Democrat (SPD)
candidate told foreign correspondents the contest would not be
decided until the last few weeks of the campaign.

“The election will be decided in the last six weeks, because
the German electorate is volatile and many people make up their
minds in the last seven to 10 days if and for whom they are
going to vote,” he said.

“It’s true that Frau Merkel’s popularity ratings are very
high but it’s also true that the poll ratings for her government
are down in the basement,” said Steinbrueck, whose party is some
15 percentage points behind the conservatives in opinion polls.

“Merkel tries to tell the German public ‘don’t worry,
nothing has happened, everything is okay, just go to sleep, I’ll
take care of it and when you wake up it will all be okay’,” he
said, raising the pitch of his voice as if to imitate her.

While about six out of 10 people say in polls they would
choose Merkel if Germany elected its chancellor directly, rather
than via the Bundestag (lower house of parliament), Steinbrueck
gets under 20 percent support.

The SPD knows that, to have a chance of unseating Merkel
rather than just hoping to be her junior partner as it was in
2005-2009, it must mobilise supporters who did not bother to
vote in 2009, when the SPD scored its worst result in post-war
history at 23 percent.

“Since our election victory under Gerhard Schroeder in 1998
the SPD managed to lose about eight or nine million voters,”
Steinbrueck said. Most of those had not defected to other
parties, but were in a “waiting room” for non-voters, he said.

HAMSTRUNG

Steinbrueck’s campaign got off to a bad start. His sardonic
humour and high earnings as an after-dinner speaker failed to
impress the traditional working-class support base of the SPD
and his moderate policies alienated the party’s left wing.

Steinbrueck, who served as finance minister in Merkel’s
2005-2009 ‘grand coalition’ government with the SPD, finds it
difficult to differentiate his policy proposals from hers.

SPD platforms such as a legal minimum wage or protection for
tenants have been purloined by Merkel, as has the anti-nuclear
power platform of the SPD’s Greens allies.

“Merkel continues to define the centre ground broadly and
keeps stepping into territory that traditionally belongs to the
centre left,” wrote Eurasia analyst Famke Krumbmueller.

The SPD’s attempts to attack Merkel are hamstrung by its
support for her government on the euro zone crisis and by the
resilience of the German economy under her leadership, with
unemployment at its lowest since reunification.

Apart from complaining that “there are 7.5 million workers
in Germany who earn than less than 8 euros ($10.67) a day”,
Steinbrueck has limited room for manoeuvre beyond promising to
put more money into education by taxing the wealthy.

“Ninety-five percent of German citizens won’t be affected by
our tax proposals,” he said, mocking reports by
“conservative-oriented business newspapers that the ‘cold hand
of Socialism’ wants to dip its hands into their pockets”.

Often acknowledging the respect he feels for Merkel from
when they worked together in the financial crisis, Steinbrueck’s
criticisms tend to be abstract, such as saying Germany has been
“governed beneath its value” by the centre right since 2009.

“It is understandable that there are different views of the role of central banks and monetary policy around the world,” said the German official, noting that leaders of three euro zone states, the United States, Britain, Japan, Russia and Canada, would represent a wide range of views.

“The introduction of looser monetary policy could form part of the discussions,” the official told reporters.

A sell-off on global markets is accelerating as fears grow that central banks may start to scale back stimulus measures that helped push asset prices to historic highs this year.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has hinted it may start to slow down its money-printing, although the Bank of Japan – encouraged by the government – began a massive monetary stimulus program to revive its stagnant economy in April.

To euro zone nations, especially Germany, an independent central bank with a focus on stability is sacrosanct.

“It is important that we understand that we in Europe and the euro zone have a European Central Bank whose main goal is stability and which is independent,” said the German official.

“There are differences in other countries and that is part of the discussion,” the official added.

Although some European politicians, including German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, have voiced concern about Japan’s monetary stimulus, the world’s third biggest economy has escaped censure at recent meetings of the world’s richest nations.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will have a bilateral meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during the summit, the official said.

(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller; Writing by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Catherine Evans)

ECB President Mario Draghi has called the scheme “probably the most successful monetary policy measure undertaken in recent time”, and it is widely credited with restoring calm to the euro zone by easing fears of a breakup of the currency bloc.

Yet two German ECB policymakers, Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann and ECB Board member Joerg Asmussen, will take opposing sides in arguing over its legality at the Constitutional Court hearing on Tuesday and Wednesday.

It’s hard to argue with Draghi; the euro zone crisis has subsided significantly since he announced the “Outright Monetary Transactions” scheme (OMT) last year, even though the ECB hasn’t yet bought a single bond of any distressed euro zone government under the programme.

Still, more than 35,000 Germans have brought a complaint against the OMT, reflecting fatigue in Europe’s largest economy at having to fund the lion’s share of euro zone rescues.

For Weidmann, who as German central bank president sits on the ECB’s Governing Council, the programme is tantamount to printing money to finance struggling euro states. The ECB itself maintains the OMT fits within its mandate of securing price stability.

The court in the southern city of Karlsruhe, which has delivered several high profile verdicts on euro zone bailouts in recent years, is not expected to reach a final ruling on OMT until after a German parliamentary election in September.

But the judges could signal what they think of the programme and whether they feel the case falls within their jurisdiction.

The court cannot order the ECB to revoke its bond-buying programme. But in considering whether OMT violates the German parliament’s sovereign right to control the budget, it could decide to challenge certain aspects of the programme, such as its “unlimited” nature.

“Any limitations in this regard could severely hamper the effectiveness of the OMT,” said Barclays economist Thomas Harjes in a research note on Monday.

The programme has worked largely by giving investors the confidence to buy bonds issued by troubled countries such as Spain and Italy, assured that the ECB would intervene if any government were at serious risk of defaulting on its debt.

German media reported at the weekend that the ECB could tell the court that OMT was effectively limited to 524 billion euros, equivalent to the amount of short-term debt issued by Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain. But an ECB spokesman responded that it had “no ex-ante limits”.

In earlier rulings the court has approved other euro zone bailout schemes while insisting the Bundestag lower house of parliament be consulted more fully.

For the first time since the currency was launched in 1999, an anti-euro party, the Alternative for Germany, is competing in the federal election, though it looks unlikely to win any seats.

Peter Gauweiler, a Bavarian on the eurosceptic fringe of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, has called the OMT “state financing through the ECB in clear violation of the law” and said it has only imposed a “deceptive calm” on markets.

But German economist Holger Schmieding of Berenberg Bank said Draghi’s claims about the bond-buying plan’s success were justified.

For his part, Asmussen warned in Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper on Monday that a court order to withdraw the programme would have “significant consequences”.

The German court could decide that ECB action falls under the jurisdiction of the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice.

However, the Karlsruhe court is more likely to approve ECB action, while asking it to make clear it is not using monetary policy to finance euro zone states’ budgets, experts said.

“Building in such a requirement would not be a problem, as the ECB has not finalized the legal OMT documentation yet,” said Andreas Rees, chief German economist at Unicredit Research.

(Additional reporting by Sakari Suoninen in Frankfurt and Georgina Prodhan in Vienna; Writing by Stephen Brown; editing by David Stamp)

A forum on “What Matters to People – Wellbeing and Progress”
heard from speakers whose common theme was that economic success
alone does not bring happiness.

“We look at the stock exchange index or currencies on the
news each morning and talk a lot about growth in terms of gross
domestic product, but we often don’t prioritise what is really
most important to people,” Chancellor Merkel said in an address.

Participants spoke about such varied routes to human
contentment as keeping elephants off crops in southern Bhutan,
mobile phone applications for organic farmers in Kenya or
building bicycle paths in Colombia.

The shared conclusion was that once countries have developed
enough to meet basic needs, economic indicators like GDP are
less important than human relationships and mental health.

Merkel said that when Germany hosted the World Cup in 2006
she was “astonished to hear so many people think it always rains
here and that Germans don’t know how to laugh”.

She tried to put a positive spin on Germans’ famed
pessimism, saying that seeing the glass as half empty “could be
a form of happiness, because they can see how to get it filled”.

Often herself the target of caricatures of dour German
austerity and bossiness thanks to her push for budget cuts in
the euro zone, Merkel was told that Germany’s Danish, Dutch and
Swiss neighbours all tend to be happier than her compatriots.

British economist Richard Layard, editor of the World
Happiness Report, said the main factor making people miserable
was mental illness, and that only a third of Germans with
anxiety or depression got treatment.

The forum heard from the head of Bhutan’s Gross National
Happiness Commission, U.N. development experts, a Saudi writer
on women’s issues, a Kenyan entrepreneur and a former mayor of
Bogota.

Merkel’s interest might not have been purely academic, as
she prepares for elections in September.

“The electorate will respond to politicians who actually
identify the things that worry people – the trouble your child
is having in a badly behaved classroom or the fact that your
mother is mentally ill,” said Layard.

(Reporting by Stephen Brown; editing by Andrew Roche)

But Social Democrat (SPD) Peer Steinbrueck, who lags far behind Merkel in polls for the September vote, had few proposals in the main foreign policy speech of his campaign that differentiated him from the governing conservatives.

Like most center-left politicians in Europe, he lambasted Merkel for imposing tough economic reforms on struggling euro zone economies in return for bailouts where Germany, the bloc’s biggest economy, foots over a quarter of the bill.

“The content and style of crisis management of this government and Frau Merkel has spread doubt in Europe about whether it can count on German solidarity,” Steinbrueck said.

The focus on austerity had pushed some economies into a “death spiral”, he said, and created endemic youth unemployment across Europe.

Merkel’s insistence on tough structural reforms in heavily indebted Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Cyprus has made her deeply unpopular there, with protesters sometimes portraying her in Nazi uniform or with a Hitler moustache.

Steinbrueck, who served in Merkel’s cabinet in her 2005-2009 “grand coalition” government with the SPD, asked in his speech at Berlin’s Free University: “Have you any idea what it would be like if Germany had to make savings of 5 percent a year?

“You would not be here, you would be out in the street. But that’s what we’re doing with these other countries.”

NOT AN AMERICAN CENTURY

Steinbrueck echoed the call from opposition in Europe – including Greek leftists – for a new “Marshall Plan” like the U.S. aid that raised Europe from the ashes of World War Two, to make euro zone economies more competitive.

Investing 10 billion euros to create half a million jobs for young people would be just a fraction of the 700 billion euros Europe had dedicated to propping up its banks recently, he said.

Germany could help, Steinbrueck said, by reducing its current account surplus.

Steinbrueck, whose record as a competent minister has been eclipsed by gaffes such as calling two top Italian politicians “clowns”, struck a moderate tone but found it hard to overcome the classic dilemma of how to reconcile Germany’s economic might with historical European mistrust of its ambitions.

On the one hand he said, Germany “should not lay claim to leadership in Europe” but on the other he criticized Germany for failing to answer calls from the United States or neighboring Poland for a more pro-active Germany.

He chided Merkel’s government for letting others take the brunt of military missions like Libya while also saying Germany exported too many arms and that its armed forces did not need drones. Germans have been debating the cost of such equipment.

Steinbrueck struck an awkward balance on the United States ahead of a visit by President Barack Obama this month. He backed EU-U.S. free trade talks while saying: “The United States will no doubt continue to play a dominant role, but this will not be an American century with undisputed U.S. supremacy.”

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

With her foreign minister saying Germany must not act with “Teutonic arrogance” towards its euro zone neighbors, Merkel played down criticism she has received from France’s ruling Socialists.

“Living in an open society we must have nuances between conflict and bosom friendship. It seems there is nothing between the two – but the reality is different,” Merkel told a conference on Europe in Berlin.

Hollande’s party last month called Merkel’s leadership in the euro zone crisis “self-centered” in a text – later amended – which revealed the depth of hostility in France provoked by her drive for fiscal austerity.

Germany’s ruling conservatives have offered steady criticisms of Hollande’s inability to reduce the public deficit.

But Merkel told an audience of politicians and diplomats she had “a good personal relationship” with Hollande and that relations between Europe’s two biggest economies “stand on very strong foundations”.

Her close partnership with Hollande’s conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, which led to the pair being dubbed “Merkozy”, was a hard act to follow.

But Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who until recently ran summits of the 17 euro zone states, said media reports about hostile body language between Merkel and Hollande were “laughable”.

One year into his term, Hollande’s approval ratings are among the worst for a post-World War Two leader, while Merkel polls around 60 percent and is likely to win a third term in a September election.

While Merkel may not sympathize with his Socialist politics, she knows that the stability of Germany and the euro zone depends on Hollande’s success.

Merkel said that she and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble were both “very optimistic” that France would strike the right balance between consolidating its budget and encouraging growth.

“We will not criticize France openly,” Schaeuble told the conference. “We know that France can do and does do many things better than Germany.”

Germany had to avoid acting like a “know-it-all” when giving France advice, he said. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Germany must beware of acting with “Teutonic arrogance”.

Merkel, who spoke straight after Britain’s Minister for Europe David Lidington, said she was too busy to worry what happens if Prime Minister David Cameron’s promised referendum on European Union membership results in a British exit.

She emphasized all she had in common with Cameron on issues like free trade and making the EU more efficient, joking: “When I find anyone like-minded in Europe, I take what I can get.”

(Additional reporting by Annika Breidthardt and Andreas Rinke; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

The banking union is a crucial part of Europe’s drive to overcome its financial and sovereign debt crisis. In a first step, it involves the creation of a Europe-wide banking supervisor under the hood of the European Central Bank. This is to be followed by a so-called resolution scheme to close or salvage struggling banks.

Just last month, Schaeuble appeared to slam on the brakes by saying the European Union needed to consider treaty change before proceeding, due to the “doubtful legal basis” on which the project rested. Those comments sparked a backlash from EU officials and German partners like France.

On Tuesday however, at a Berlin university event with his French counterpart Pierre Moscovici, Schaeuble struck a more conciliatory tone, calling banking union a “priority project” and promising to press ahead with it “quickly”.

He said that while Europe needed institutional changes in the medium-term, it should not wait for this to solve its current problems.

“We must make the best of it on the basis of the current treaties, and where we do not manage to achieve things institutionally, then we will work inter-governmentally or even bilaterally,” he said.

Germany, which holds an election in September, has in recent months stressed the need for caution and careful preparation in the drive for a banking union, anxious about exposing its citizens to the liabilities of Europe’s weakened banking sector.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted on tough austerity measures to cut the euro zone’s public debt, but France’s Moscovici urged Berlin to show more understanding for the plight of struggling southern countries.

FRANCE URGES FLEXIBILITY

“It is true that Germany is very attached traditionally to rules and discipline, which are things we need – but at the same time we have to be capable of flexibility, of understanding and of respecting our diversity,” the French Socialist said.

He joked that Schaeuble “would perhaps not have spontaneously advised me to get an extension” to the French deficit goals from the European Commission, adding that his German colleague had expressed his understanding.

Last week, the Commission, the EU’s executive body, granted France – the euro zone’s second largest economy – two more years to cut its public deficit to below three percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

Unlike Germany, where the economy remains relatively robust and unemployment is near two decade lows, France has seen jobless numbers soar to record levels.

Moscovici said countries had to reduce their public debt but at an appropriate pace, adding that Paris did not see the Commission’s decision as an excuse to neglect sorely needed structural reforms.

“We will continue our efforts to tackle the structural deficit,” he said. “France is a serious country conducting a credible policy, we do not renounce (fiscal responsibility).”

But Moscovici stressed that the most pressing challenge for France and many of its euro zone peers was job creation.

“Of course, we have to make sure public finances are put right, but you have to carry out this exercise carefully, taking into account the national situations and defining the right rhythm for preserving growth prospects,” he said.

(Reporting by Stephen Brown, Annika Breidthardt, Gareth Jones, Writing by Gareth Jones, Editing by Noah Barkin)

The banking union is a crucial part of Europe’s drive to
overcome its financial and sovereign debt crisis. In a first
step, it involves the creation of a Europe-wide banking
supervisor under the hood of the European Central Bank. This is
to be followed by a so-called resolution scheme to close or
salvage struggling banks.

Just last month, Schaeuble appeared to slam on the brakes by
saying the European Union needed to consider treaty change
before proceeding, due to the “doubtful legal basis” on which
the project rested. Those comments sparked a backlash from EU
officials and German partners like France.

On Tuesday however, at a Berlin university event with his
French counterpart Pierre Moscovici, Schaeuble struck a more
conciliatory tone, calling banking union a “priority project”
and promising to press ahead with it “quickly”.

He said that while Europe needed institutional changes in
the medium-term, it should not wait for this to solve its
current problems.

“We must make the best of it on the basis of the current
treaties, and where we do not manage to achieve things
institutionally, then we will work inter-governmentally or even
bilaterally,” he said.

Germany, which holds an election in September, has in recent
months stressed the need for caution and careful preparation in
the drive for a banking union, anxious about exposing its
citizens to the liabilities of Europe’s weakened banking sector.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted on tough austerity
measures to cut the euro zone’s public debt, but France’s
Moscovici urged Berlin to show more understanding for the plight
of struggling southern countries.

FRANCE URGES FLEXIBILITY

“It is true that Germany is very attached traditionally to
rules and discipline, which are things we need – but at the same
time we have to be capable of flexibility, of understanding and
of respecting our diversity,” the French Socialist said.

He joked that Schaeuble “would perhaps not have
spontaneously advised me to get an extension” to the French
deficit goals from the European Commission, adding that his
German colleague had expressed his understanding.

Last week, the Commission, the EU’s executive body, granted
France – the euro zone’s second largest economy – two more years
to cut its public deficit to below three percent of gross
domestic product (GDP).

Unlike Germany, where the economy remains relatively robust
and unemployment is near two decade lows, France has seen
jobless numbers soar to record levels.

Moscovici said countries had to reduce their public debt but
at an appropriate pace, adding that Paris did not see the
Commission’s decision as an excuse to neglect sorely needed
structural reforms.

“We will continue our efforts to tackle the structural
deficit,” he said. “France is a serious country conducting a
credible policy, we do not renounce (fiscal responsibility).”

But Moscovici stressed that the most pressing challenge for
France and many of its euro zone peers was job creation.

“Of course, we have to make sure public finances are put
right, but you have to carry out this exercise carefully, taking
into account the national situations and defining the right
rhythm for preserving growth prospects,” he said.