French President Nicolas Sarkozy said this afternoon that Paris and Berlin want to see the introduction of a "reinforced and harmonised Golden Rule" on the deficits of eurozone states.

After meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Sarkozy said the goal would be for "national constitutional courts to verify that national budgets are returning to balance".

He said that France and Germany want automatic sanctions against EU member states whose deficits go over three percent of their gross domestic product.

"We want immediate sanctions in the event of non-respect for the rule keeping deficits below three percent" of GDP, Sarkozy said.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.