"French president François Hollande, appearing at only his third EU summit in Brussels after having thrown down the gauntlet to Angela Merkel this week in an interview with the Guardian and other European newspapers, flatly dismissed German demands for a new European "budgets tsar" who would be able to overrule national governments and parliaments on tax-and-spend policies in the eurozone.
"The topic of this summit is not the fiscal union but the banking union, so the only decision that will be taken is to set up a banking union by the end of the year and especially the banking supervision," Hollande said. "Merkel has her own deadline, in September 2013," he added caustically, referring to next year's general election in which the German leader is seeking a third term."
