Finance ministers and central bankers from the 27 members of the European Union met in Brussels to discuss the key financial and economic issues facing the EU and also to set out their priorities ahead of the meeting of G20 finance ministers at the weekend. A number of news sources have begun to report on the outcome of the meeting, the communiqué for which will be released in the next few days.  

Speaking before the meeting Alistair Darling, the British Chancellor, called on rich EU nations to increase the help available to small, fragile states, adding that EU members were dependent on each other for trade and economic growth. 'If something goes wrong in one country, that can flow back to other countries,' he said.

He said the G20 finance ministers meeting in West Sussex at the weekend would look to how countries can 'help each other'. He said: 'One of the things we are discussing at the G20 meeting is how do we help each other because if we do that then this downturn will be a lot less painful than otherwise would be the case. We are all in this together.'

On Monday Larry Summers, Barack Obama's chief economic adviser, urged all countries to deliver a short-term co-ordinated boost to the global economy, saying: 'The right macro-economic focus for the G20 is on global demand.'

Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of a meeting of finance ministers from euro zone countries on 9 March, responsed to Summers remarks at a news conference where he said: 'The 16 finance ministers (or the euro zone) agreed that recent American appeals insisting Europeans make an added budgetary effort were not to our liking, given that we are not prepared to go further in the recovery packages we have put forward.'

The EU finance ministers’ meeting came as Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, said leaders from the G20 rich and developing economies should focus on the international aspect of the financial crisis when they meet next month.

'This is very much an international problem and it requires international solutions,' Bernanke said in response to a question at the Council on Foreign Relations.

'In particular, we need to work together effectively to make sure that we have solutions for our banking systems that are not mutually inconsistent or create problems across jurisdictions. We need to make sure that we are working together to stabilize the banking system and to avoid the failure of systemically critical firms.'

In his address to the FAC, called for an overhaul of the 'financial architecture'. He outlined four areas that need to be addressed to ensure that a similar crisis does not develop in the future:

• The problem, often referred to as 'too big to fail', whereby an institution gets so big that its failure has serious consequences for the whole financial system.

• Financial rules and conventions - on trading, payments and clearing, for example - that underpin the financial system.

• Regulation and accounting policies.

• The creation of an authority to monitor and address systemic risk.

Mr Bernanke also said the world was suffering from the 'worst financial crisis since the 1930s, a crisis that has precipitated a sharp downturn in the global economy'. The World Bank this week forecast the global economy would suffer the biggest recession since World War II this year, and IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the world was in a 'great recession'. 'The IMF expects global growth to slow below zero this year, the worst performance in most of our lifetimes,' he told African political and financial leaders at a conference in Tanzania.

A senior World Bank official said there was room for additional stimulus packages to shorten the global recession and G20 nations should now show leadership to hopefully ensure an economic improvement this year. 'This is the time for the G20 to show leadership to try to restore confidence in the financial markets and indicate that they are going to coordinate and provide sufficient stimulus so that the recession hopefully begins to turn around at the end of 2009,' Danny Leipziger, the World Bank's vice president for poverty reduction and economic management, told Reuters in an interview.