EU finance ministers fail to agree on key aspects of euro zone budget -official

European Union finance ministers failed to agree in overnight talks on Thursday and Friday on some of the key features of a future eurozone budget and decided to continue discussions in the coming months, a euro zone official said. The ministers wanted to reach a deal on whether the budget for the 19-country eurozone should be financed through dedicated taxes or if it should only draw on cash from the budget for the whole 28-nation European Union.

Given no consensus on the sources of financing, the size of the eurozone budget was not discussed, the official said. Neither was their agreement on whether the budget should play a stabilising role in case the eurozone economy was in a downturn or only help euro zone economies become more competitive and converge with each other, the official said.