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Obama era dawning

• Mark Mardell
• 7 Nov 08, 02:45 PM

Who will the European leaders be dealing with when they travel to Washington ?

Of course, George W will be the man across the table, but they will want to know how much Team Obama is running the show behind the scenes. It may be pretty important for how their ideas go down.

There's going to be some trading places this end too. The French are promising that Spain, the world's eighth largest economy, will be at the top table, perhaps taking one of the French seats: they have two, both as a country and as the EU president.

Don't be surprised if the Czechs are seen wandering around saying "Zut alors!" They too have been promised that they can get a seat at the table as part of the French delegation.

The French are calling for today's summit to propose "concrete responses" to be discussed at the big world summit on 15 November in Washington. They want to make sure that "no financial institution.. escapes regulation" and many of their ideas are aimed at removing the rewards for short termism and too much risk-taking.

They say by the end of the Washington meeting there should be general agreement on these principles, including a new code on risk-taking. And they want these ideas to be turned into hard and fast rules within 100 days of the Washington summit.

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The pre-summit summit

• Mark Mardell
• 7 Nov 08, 11:09 AM

The fourth emergency European summit in two months kicks off at lunchtime.

It's been called to coordinate a European Union position ahead of next week's Washington meeting on new financial rules.

Even though the economics commissioner Joaquin Almunia says "there is a single vision" there'll be a fair bit of argument about how much detail they should agree today.

The French have come forward with an 11-point plan, ranging from "draw up codes of conduct to address incentives to excessive risk-taking" to "promote a change of culture in the governance of financial institutions towards sustainable value creation."

The British worry is that too much detail will tie European hands in Washington and that the French plan to introduce protectionism in the guise of tighter regulation. There will be no written agreement at the end of today, so we will rely on the news conferences to find out what has happened.

Unusually even the top civil servants won't be in the room: it will be just the prime ministers and presidents plus the French ambassador to the EU, who will then debrief his 26 colleagues.

When I get to hear more I will let you know.

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