Brown and Sarkozy in economy call
Updated on 06 July 2009
Gordon Brown has called on world leaders to complete "radical reforms" on the economy as agreed at the G20 summit in April.
Speaking at a one-day Anglo-French summit in Evian-les-Bains, Mr Brown expressed concern that the banks were still not lending enough to business and he said action was needed to stabilise the long-term price of oil.
At a joint news conference with President Nicolas Sarkozy, the Prime Minister said: "Both of us are worried that the banks have yet to respond in full to the situation that we have where industries and sectors are calling for help for the banks."
"We have a duty to our populations to do what we can to maintain jobs and create new jobs in difficult times.
"We need to complete the radical reforms that were agreed at the G20 and we will continue to work together to do so."
Mr Brown said relations between France and Britain had never been better.
He praised Mr Sarkozy's efforts to make the world "a safer place, a more prosperous place, and a greener place", joking: "President Sarkozy, mon ami, you are truly a force of nature."
And he added: "President Sarkozy and I share a vision of the better future. It is a partnership based on shared values: Britain and France together building better global institutions, global rules and a global society; Britain and France continuing the strong alliance that becomes stronger every day."
Mr Sarkozy said he shared Mr Brown's analysis that a "much stronger co-ordination" of European countries' strategies was needed to tackle the economic crisis.
"Of course we need to combat indebtedness and try to restrain deficit, but we will only achieve that if we restore growth and if we restore our economies to health," said the French President.
"That is self-evident. If we don't have more growth, we can't balance things out. If we want growth, we both of us have to do whatever we can to help countries do more."
Mr Sarkozy embarrassed Mr Brown in a TV interview in February, in which he described the UK Government's temporary cut in VAT as a "mistake" that had "absolutely not worked".
Today, he insisted that his comment was not intended as a criticism of British policy. He said he had been resisting pressure to copy the British approach, which would not have been appropriate for France.
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