Backslapping

At the start of a week-long trade union congress in the city of Karlsruhe, President Christian Wulff has called for a comprehensive regulatory framework for global financial markets.

"The banking sector needs to be streamlined and reorganized, thoroughly and expeditiously," Wulff said at the closed gathering of the engineering union IG Metall on Sunday.

He said market liberalization and deregulation had gone too far and had been abused.

"We must not sacrifice our foundation, the social market economy and democracy, to the nervous financial markets, where individuals simply ignore the common good," Wulff said.

He went on to praise Germany's largest trade union with 2.2 million members for its efforts to restrain wages during the debt crisis. "It is the merit of the unions that Germany is in a uniquely good position in this crisis."

'Not too late for change'

The IG Metall gathering had been called to discuss, among other matters, the state of financial markets, employment conditions and the welfare state.

IG Metall Deputy Chairman, Detlef Wetzel, said the body wanted to help counter the eurozone debt crisis parallel to policy efforts at the domestic and international levels.

"We don't want to have to experience once again the domination of the markets by gamblers," Wetzel said, adding that a change of course in business and society was still possible to avoid future debt crises.

The trade union meeting came as German Chancellor Angela Merkel held high-level talks with her French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, in Berlin. The pair emerged with a vow to do everything necessary to stabilize Europe's ailing banking sector.

Author: Darren Mara (Reuters, dpa)
Editor: Michael Lawton