Merkel seeks ‘middle ground’ rescue package

THE search is on in the EU to find something German chancellor Angela Merkel can offer her voters in return for increasing the flexibility of the soon-to-be-revamped rescue package.

Her demand that all eurozone countries sign up to a Competitiveness Pact she devised with French President Nicolas Sarkozy was met with outrage by many of the member states at the summit on Friday.

However, Chancellor Merkel, facing a series of elections in the federal German states, some of them vital for her government’s survival, will need to show some gain that she has wrested from the EU in return for a revamped and possibly enlarged rescue package revolving around the €750 billion fund.