Debate over adding firepower to the euro zone's debt rescue funds heated up today as Germany clashed with Brussels ahead of a meeting of finance ministers. European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso has pressed European leaders to take a decision to 'reinforce' rescue funds by a February 4 summit but the euro zone's biggest economy - Germany - refuses to be rushed into it.
'Isolated proposals do not make the situation any easier, but rather more complicated,' German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on German radio ahead of the ministerial meeting in Brussels.
Schaeuble reiterated Berlin's position, saying he saw 'absolutely no reason in the short term' to debate increasing the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) for struggling euro zone economies.
Barroso has urged the euro zone to move faster on the issue, calling for a decision by the summit originally aimed at discussing energy reform, and has not hesitated to tell Berlin what he thought it should be doing.
'I expect top German politicians to respect the role of the commission. We in the commission have not only the right, but also the duty, to tell Europe's citizens what we think is right,' he told Germany's Spiegel magazine.
The debate has ranged from calls to double the size of bail-out funds to €1.5 trillion to a proposal to allow the system to buy debt from struggling euro zone countries in order to keep their borrowing costs down.