Sarkozy summit gets underway

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is hosting heads of Government from Germany, Italy and Britain for a mini-summit he hopes will restore confidence in the banking sector and help a Western economy on the brink of recession.

The meeting follows US Congressional approval of a 500 billion euro bail-out on Wall Street.

The fall-out has redrawn the financial landscape on both sides of the Atlantic where paralysed money markets are causing stocks to plummet.

Sarkozy’s plan is to prove that voters and businesses in Europe can count on governments
to mobilise the resources needed to protect investor savings.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are all at the table along with the policymakers, the President of the European Central Bank Jean Claude Trichet and euro zone currency chief Jean Claude Juncker.

Angela Merkel is expected to re-iterate Germany’s opposition to using taxpayers’ money to help ailing banks.

The meeting comes after five bank rescue operations across Europe in the space of a few days at a cost of more than 72 billion euros.

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