L’Espagne souhaite davantage d’intégration économique à la tête de l’UE[en] 

At a joint news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Zapatero said boosting the EU's power to tackle economic crises would be a priority during Spain's six months at the helm.

"I agreed with President Sarkozy that if the European Union really wants to be a political union, which works for its citizens, it has to have a much more solid economic government [...] with tools," Zapatero told journalists in Madrid.

"I can't see a single market, a single currency, then not see an economic government with powers, with tools," he added.

The financial crisis has revealed huge gaps in Europe's economic governance, with some member states scrambling to save ailing banks last year without prior coordination at EU level. "The economic crisis is posing major economic coordination challenges," one senior EU official admitted. "We cannot stay with this rather loose strategy anymore."

A statement  about the Spanish EU Presidency, published on the prime minister's website, said Spain would seek to coordinate stimulus measures, and said it was necessary to actively put in place mechanisms to avoid future crises by improving regulation and supervision of financial markets.

It said the need for a strong Europe was "all the more indispensable in the context of the international crisis," and that the EU's Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs, launched in 2000, remained "one of the fundamental pillars" of EU economic policy. The objective, it added, was to adopt decisions on the future Lisbon Strategy during the spring 2010 EU summit of heads of state. 

Zapatero's spokesman said later that the prime minister was seeking a much more rapid and less bureaucratic system, but he offered no details as to what tools Zapatero was seeking for the EU.

Zapatero also underlined his support for strong public spending to escape the economic crisis. He fired Pedro Solbes as economy minister earlier this month, after the pair had increasingly disagreed on what margin Spain had to spend more to help the economy and reduce unemployment, which has now topped four million.

"When the financial system is at the edge of collapse, who is it that has to save the financial system? It is the governments with public funds," he said on the second day of Sarkozy's first state visit to Spain.

(EurActiv with Reuters.)