国际英语新闻:Markets Unimpressed by France-Germany Euro Plans

France and Germany said they don’t want to increase the size of the European Union’s rescue fund, which is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Some investors say it needs to value at least $2 trillion to be effective.

Iain Begg, a European economics expert with the London-based research group Chatham House, said Sarkozy and Merkel haven’t put “enough meat on the bones” of their proposal. He said that’s important because economic integration in Europe is vital.

When VOA asked him why, he replied, "Well, because it enables a much stronger defensive bulwark to be created to oppose the market's pressures, which have been so devastating over the last 18 months. And it's also the sort of structure that is going to be more enduring in exactly the same way as in the U.S., where having a single treasury bond is a very significant source of strength for the American economy."

But Begg said the process of integration is inevitably slow, not least because it often lacks popular support. He said, for example, that when it comes to doling out money, the population of Europe’s largest economy is hesitant.

"In Germany, for example, there is clearly strong opposition to the idea of their tax base somehow being responsible for the debts of other countries," he said. "In other countries you might find support for integration across something like the military sphere, and still they will look for closer integration on social issues. So you have to look at it dossier by dossier to find out what populations are really in favor of or opposed to."

Merkel and Sarkozy put forward a plan Tuesday for a Europe-wide tax on financial transactions.