Sunday's meeting was the first time the heads of state in the 15 nations in the single-currency zone have met since the euro was introduced.
"Instead of tearing us apart, this global crisis has strengthened the necessity of dialogue, understanding and compromise," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Sunday. "It's not so easy. We don't have the same traditions, for some we don't share the same currency, we have different regulators. And with this crisis, in a few hours, day and night, we've had to learn and understand each other's problems and find a common solution."
Governments will play a central role guided by the EU, according to a statement by the participants. States will guarantee new bank debt through the end of 2009, provide emergency recapitalization to prevent distressed banks from failing and buy preferred shares in financial institutions. European accounting rules will also be relaxed because of the "exceptional circumstances."
"While acting quickly as required by circumstances, we will coordinate in providing these guarantees as significant differences in national implementation could have a counterproductive effect, creating distortions in the global banking markets," the leaders said in a joint declaration.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain also attended and voiced support for the effort.
"I believe that there is common ground now about what needs to be done, that it has to be comprehensive, and it has to be all countries working together to get to the bottom and solve what is a global financial problem," Brown said after a preliminary meeting with Sarkozy, who has used his hard-charging style to push for an aggressive response to the crisis because France holds the EU presidency.
Britain is a major player in the EU but has retained the pound sterling rather than adopting the euro, a dissonance that is symptomatic of the tensions among member states. Sarkozy said the accord permitted the European Union to overcome one of its inherent problems: It creates a unified, concrete policy while allowing for flexibility to account for differences in economies, laws and cultures in the vast continental entity.
The Europeans want to avoid the discordant image of past weeks in which at times it seemed governments were making solo decisions that undercut others and worsened their economic woes. At the same time, proposals such as creating a central European bailout fund are seen as cumbersome and unrealistic given the differences among countries.
