Twenty-five of the EU’s 27 countries have signed up to a German-inspired treaty enshrining tougher fiscal rules to help underpin the euro, with the Czech Republic announcing it would join the UK by not agreeing to the pact. Reuters says Ms Merkel “cemented her political ascendency” with the treaty. But the FT reports Berlin was warned that there were limits to how much sovereignty governments could be expected to surrender for the sake of fiscal discipline. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, said the German proposal for the EU to control Greece’s budget decision-making “would not be reasonable, not be democratic nor would it be effective”. He said that he had confronted Angela Merkel, his German counterpart, with his views and insisted she had agreed. “The recovery process in Greece can only be enacted by the Greeks themselves, democratically,” Mr Sarkozy said. “There can be no question of putting any country under tutelage. Having spoken to the chancellor, I can tell you this is exactly her position.” However, Ms Merkel said she still believed that Greece required stricter monitoring to stick to its bail-out targets, saying Athens’ repeated failure to implement agreed reforms warranted more intensive intervention. Read more