EU budget rules at centre of tensions over growth

Brussels

GERMANY and France both called for economic growth to be at the heart of the eurozone's budget strategy on Thursday but German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned against returning to the pre-crisis days of high spending to try to revive the economy.

With the eurozone flirting with stagnation and deflation, the leaders of the bloc's two biggest economies put the emphasis on growth as they arrived for an EU summit in Brussels. But their comments betrayed starkly different visions on how to act.