国际英语新闻：EU leaders agree to tighten economic governance, but risk problems with treaty change

"This is a clear example of me standing up for the stability of the euro," Merkel told reporters after the summit. "I think it is important to create a clear culture of stability ... Europe makes us strong but this Europe needs rules."

The exact nature of the treaty changes was not immediately agreed. Instead the leaders tasked Herman Van Rompuy, the former Belgian prime minister who serves as the chairman of EU summits, to produce proposals that can be agreed at the next summit in December.

The idea is that the changes can be ratified by all member nations by the time the emergency funding mechanism runs out in mid-2013. Some EU finance officials expressed concern that such drawn out procedures would not help efforts to strengthen market confidence in eurozone nations.

The leaders said the new permanent fund should involve the private sector and the International Monetary Fund. They also agreed on the need for closer surveillance of national budgets to ensure they do not slip into a Greece-style mess and on tougher measures to punish those that allow lax finances to threaten eurozone stability.

A German proposal for those punishments to include a suspension of nations' voting rights in EU meetings ran into opposition, although the summit's closing conclusions still hold out that prospect in the "case of a permanent threat to the stability of the euro area as a whole."

The leaders stressed that the "limited treaty change" required would not lead to a transfer of power from national capitals to the EU headquarters in Brussels, a move that would trigger referendums on the treaty in countries such as Britain and Ireland.

Voters have a tendency to reject EU treaties when they are presented in referendums. Irish voters initially rejected the Lisbon Treaty, plunging the EU into a year-long crisis, before they were asked to vote again in 2009. French and Dutch votes sunk a previous effort to give the EU a constitutional basis.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Irish counterpart Brian Cowen both expressed confidence that the limited changes would not need referendum votes, but both could face challenges from powerful euro-skeptic lobbies at home.

Cameron led a charge against a proposal from the European Parliament to increase the EU's own operating budget by 5.9 percent. The leaders agreed that the increase should be limited to 2.9 percent.

The EU's budget is currently 123 billion euros (170 billion dollars) based on contributions from the member nations, and the money is mostly spent on support for farmers, poorer regions within the EU and aid to developing nations.

The EU leaders did find some time to discuss the November G20 summit in Seoul, calling for greater coordination in economic governance.

They also agreed on a position ahead of the Cancun climate conference starting next month, confirming the EU's willingness to extend commitments under the Kyoto agreement and offering to cut greenhouse gas emissions beyond their current 20-percent target if there are matching engagements from other nations.