THE German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, will meet President Jacques Chirac of France in Paris today for the second time in three days in an attempt to patch up a growing rift between their two countries on the future of European Monetary Union.
Bonn insists that the euro must be at least as strong a currency as the Deutschmark and that member countries should adhere to a strict economic stability pact. But a number of senior French economic and political figures, including the former president, Mr Valery Giscard d'Estaing, claim that the German strategy is damaging French economic interests.
The flurry of diplomatic activity between Bonn and Paris reflects the urgency felt on both sides that their differences should be resolved in advance of the Dublin summit on December 13th. Dr Kohl and Mr Chirac, who held talks at Perigeaux in the Dordogne on Saturday, are due to meet for their regular half yearly summit in Nuremberg next Monday.
The former German foreign minister, Mr Hans Dietrich Genscher, warned this week that Bonn was endangering European Monetary Union by pressing for an economic stability pact. Writing in the Welt am Sonntag, he said that Germany should concentrate on making sure that it meets the EMU entry conditions itself rather than lecturing others on the need for more safeguards than are already written into the Maastricht Treaty.
"Abiding by the treaty also rules out constantly making new demands. Otherwise it could easily happen that the attempt to load or onto it could end up unsaddling the entire monetary union. Germany has agreed to the Maastricht treaties. Nobody should create the impression in retrospect chat the Maastricht stability guarantees are inadequate and must be improved on," he wrote.
Mr Genscher's comments came as the Bundesbank president, Mr Hans Tietmeyer, predicted that the single currency would go ahead on schedule in 1999 and denied that he was opposed to the project.
In an interview published in yesterday's edition of Der Spiegel, Mr Tietmeyer defended the tough criteria entry to EMU.
"I am in favour of monetary union. Anyone who says I am not is wrong. It is very unfortunate that the required adjustments to fiscal, social and structural policies are justified solely by monetary union in many countries. The reforms are necessary in order to regain or maintain competitiveness for the future," he said.
