Britain and France joined forces at a European Union summit yesterday to demand that bankers' bonuses be taxed heavily and Germany called for solidarity with Greece over a mounting debt problem.

A British spokesman said Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy had agreed on the need to tax big bonuses substantially following the economic crisis at a 30-minute meeting on the sidelines of the summit in Brussels. The talks appeared to ease tension over the appointment of former French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier to help oversee a banking shake-up, which alarmed Britons who fear Paris will seek tougher regulation of London, Europe's main financial centre.

"They are both completely aligned on the importance of that sort of (tax) scheme to ensure that going forward we don't repeat the same mistakes of the past and move towards an era of more responsible banking," spokesman Simon Lewis said.

Many voters blame bankers for the economic crisis and are angry they could now receive huge bonuses, even though some of their banks were bailed out with taxpayers' money.

Brown had written to other EU leaders urging them to discuss bonuses at the summit, a day after London said banks operating in Britain would be charged a 50 percent tax rate on employees' bonuses of above £25,000.

France is considering similar plans, French government sources said.

Mr Brown and Mr Sarkozy also wrote a newspaper article calling for an exceptional tax on global bank bonuses, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel described a one-off tax on such bonuses as an attractive idea.

Mr Brown's spokesman said Britain believed there was clear political support from Germany for a broader initiative, although he said it was up to individual countries to decide.