Merkel renews call for regulation

Berlin - Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel renewed on Saturday her call for tighter regulation of international financial markets, saying in her weekly videocast that the European Union had to push with its entire weight for such changes next year.

Referring to the world economic crisis, she said, "We have must do everything we can to ensure such a crisis does not happen again."

Merkel spoke of both the Lisbon Treaty, which gives the European Union its own foreign-policy presence, and this year's summit of the Group of 20 (G20) leading economies which she attended.

"The European Union must insist with one voice, with its entire weight that we adopt international rules for the financial markets. We are on the way there in the framework of the G20 process, that is, with the 20 main industrialised nations.

"What must happen now is that decisions of the summit must be genuinely put into effect. We are already doing so in the European Union and and hard work is being done in the other nations. Next year we will assess what we have achieved so far," she said.

The German-language videocast, posted on the chancellery website in Berlin, was the last of the series for this year.

Sapa-dpa