Berlin has a euroland plan

“Berlin wants more control over eurozone”, headlines Dziennik Gazeta Prawna. Germany will put more money into the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), created to help eurozone countries with sovereign debt problems, but in return has a list of eurozone fiscal reforms which it will put on the table at the EU summit in Brussels this Friday 4 February. Germany proposes raising the retirement age for both men and women to at least 67, introducing eurozone coordination of corporate income tax, scrapping automatic inflation-linked wages adjustment in the public sector, and introducing a constitutional provision on the maximum level of budget deficit or public debt. Moreover, Berlin will demand regulations making it easier for employers to lay off redundant staff. If the plan, which won’t be formalised until March, is endorsed - which “won’t be easy”, according to the Warsaw daily - chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged to increase the EFSF so that a total of €440 billion of it can be earmarked to help the troubled eurozone economies (currently it is €250 billion, with the remaining €190 billion held in obligatory reserve).