Germany wants action to bring weaker eurozone nations into line

On Friday Germany will table a list of penalties that it insists is needed to bring weak eurozone members into line as the price for yielding to the €750bn package to shore up the single currency. Speaking after Germany stunned its European partners by ordering a ban on the short-selling of certain European bonds and stocks, the chancellor, Angela Merkel, said Germany would use the meeting of finance ministers in Brussels to propose tougher rules that could see eurozone delinquents such as Greece forced out of the single currency in what she described as "orderly insolvencies". Ten days on from the dramatic Brussels weekend when European leaders pulled the euro back from the brink by agreeing the €750bn safety net, Merkel went before the German parliament to explain why Berlin had to put up almost €150bn of the €860bn total for the single currency and to rescue Greece from bankruptcy. With the bailout deeply unpopular in Germany, the short-selling ban was seen as a populist move against the markets to bolster Merkel's position as she sought to persuade the Bundestag, where she was repeatedly heckled, that she was dictating the terms of the emergency actions. France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has claimed that the rescue package is 95% French in origin and even MPs from Merkel's governing coalition of Christian Democrats and Liberals conceded that Paris routed Berlin in the battle over how to save the euro. Oliver Luksic, an MP from the Free Democrats, Merkel's junior partner, said that Germany had masterminded the rule book for the euro in the 1990s, but in the last fortnight had lost the argument "conceptually and intellectually – it's now a French stability and growth pact". Thomas Silberhorn, an MP from Bavaria's CSU, a partner of Merkel's CDU, said that persistent over-spenders in the eurozone might need to be expelled from the single currency. "We need to keep the option of actually not helping them with credits and accepting their insolvency." Merkel supported this. "We need to develop a procedure for orderly state insolvency," she said. "That will create an important incentive for euro member states to keep their budgets in order." The chancellor also listed further penalties, making it plain that she would retain a veto over access to the rescue fund. "We decide ourselves on every use of the funds." Opposition MPs interrupted Merkel with jeers of "stupid" and "will never happen". Finance ministers from the 16 countries using the single currency are to meet in Brussels on Fridayto start refining the rules for the euro. Wolfgang Schäuble, the finance minister, is to table a list of German punishments for fiscal reprobates.