BERLIN AND PARIS PUSH FOR COMPETITIVENESS PACT

Berlin, February 11- Germany and France pushed Friday for the 17-member eurozone to sign up to a raft of specific measures aimed at boosting the currency bloc's competitiveness, during talks in Berlin.

EU states in May agreed to set up a three-year bailout system to keep euro states from bankruptcy, and pledged in December to make it permanent. But in return, Berlin and Paris want a 'competitiveness pact' to force euro states to modernize their economies.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said a 'complete draft' of the pact would be made available to euro states by a special eurozone summit on March 11, insisting that a strong and flexible instrument was necessary to guarantee eurozone stability.

The two EU heavyweights sketched out their ideas at an EU summit on February 4, but met heavy criticism for the lack of detailed proposals and for not consulting other states first.

A draft of the pact also met stiff resistance from states such as Belgium and Spain, who said that some of the proposals struck at the foundation of their economic models.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Friday that every member state had to be prepared to make concessions, but added that many individual aspects of the pact would be settled once the framework had been agreed.

The ministers, who met in Berlin for a Franco-German economic council, remained adamant that the euro rescue pact must include clauses increasing competitiveness within the eurozone and the EU.

'We will strongly advocate that we must not lose the overall correlation,' Schaeuble said, adding, 'Everything is interconnected”.

Lagarde, whose country is hosting the Group of 20 (G20) leading economies, said many of the G20 goals overlapped with German interests.

She stressed the importance of lasting, sustainable growth and said one key issue was to reduce the price fluctuations for raw materials.

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