Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, will use the summit of EU leaders on 16 September to try to galvanise member states into reforming economic governance in the EU, after little progress was made this week at a meeting of a ministerial taskforce (see Page 4).

Van Rompuy will report to EU leaders on the taskforce’s work. He will say that, while governments this week agreed rules on oversight of national budgetary plans, progress on other aspects of governance reform needs to accelerate.

Sanctions

Leaders are expected to discuss what sanctions should be applied to member states that break the EU’s stability and growth pact, which sets limits on the size of national budget deficits and gross national debt. They are also expected to discuss how rigorously the pact’s debt criteria should be policed.

The ministerial taskforce was created by leaders in March. It is supposed to agree a comprehensive set of governance reforms in time for them to be endorsed by leaders at a summit on 28-29 October.

Van Rompuy has confirmed that the taskforce will hold at least one further meeting, on 18 October, prior to the deadline. Eurozone finance ministers, however, called on Tuesday (7 September) for an extra meeting to be held before the end of September, so that they can discuss proposals on governance reform that the European Commission will present on 29 September.