DEBORAH AMOS, Host: These are difficult financial times in Europe. European leaders are meeting in Brussels today to discuss their latest proposals to deal with a debt crisis that has hit Greece and threatened Spain. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli looks at what the leaders hope to achieve.</s>SYLVIA POGGIOLI: But economist Paul De Grauwe says these moves are not sufficient to give more stability to the single currency, the euro.</s>PAUL DE GRAUWE: If you're go into a monetary union, you have to do much more than just centralizing money, but also many other things. In other words, you have to also move into more political union.</s>SYLVIA POGGIOLI: Earlier this week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy tried to convince German Chancellor Angela Merkel to create a common European economic body for the 16 eurozone countries, complete with its own administration. But Charles Grant, director of London's Center for European Studies, says France and Germany have two very different philosophies.</s>CHARLES GRANT: The Germans believe in binding rules and strict discipline and punishments for those who break the rules. The French don't really like that idea. They prefer political management, political control, government discussing their problems around the table. However, although France and Germany have very different viewpoints, they will always reach a compromise in the middle.</s>SYLVIA POGGIOLI: Grant says it's not yet clear exactly what compromise will be reached, but he rules out that it will include a yielding of national sovereignty.</s>CHARLES GRANT: There will be an improved economic governance. There will be efforts to enforce budgetary discipline more strictly. There will be more coordination of economic policy, with governments commenting on each others economic plans. But that is not the same as a political union or a federal system of government, because sovereignty on economic policy will remain largely with the member states.</s>SYLVIA POGGIOLI: Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Brussels.</s>DEBORAH AMOS, Host: This is NPR News.
European leaders are in Brussels to discuss their latest plans to deal with the sovereign debt crisis. Market confidence in the euro is still shaky, despite the $1 trillion stability pact set up by the European Union. Also on the agenda, controversial measures that some hope will prevent undue market speculation.