The leaders of France and Germany are calling for stronger economic discipline among European nations.

Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy also want new balanced budget laws in all the eurozone countries as well as a new economic government made up of the heads of those nations.

Officials for the new economic government, which would be headed by European Union President Herman Van Rompuy, would meet at least two times a year.
    
Merkel and Sarkozy said they want the balanced budget amendments in place by next summer.

The proposals come as global financial markets are in upheaval over worries about Europe's economic health.
    
Merkel stressed that the crisis has been building for several years and can't be solved within days.

The two leaders stopped short of calling for common government debt, despite growing calls for the eurobond as a way to prevent the high interest rates that have driven Greece and other nations to seek bailouts.

"We have exactly the same position on euro bonds," Sarkozy said. "One day we could imagine them, but at the end of a process of European integration, not at the beginning."