European Union (EU) finance ministers are due to start a two-day meeting late Monday, aiming to coordinate their national responses to a real recession in the wake of the financial crisis.

As a usual practice, the regular monthly gathering will be preceded by a meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Monday evening and then be enlarged to the whole EU on Tuesday.

The meeting comes as gloomy figures show the 15 EU nations that use the euro, or the eurozone, were officially in a recession in the third quarter and the EU was expected to follow suit in the last quarter of this year.

Both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) predicted that the European economy was set to contract next year.

With a recession imminent, EU member states, including Britain, Germany and Italy, rushed to adopt their own stimulus packages.

One day before the EU finance ministers' meeting, Poland became the latest EU country to unveil an over 91-billion-zloty (US$31 billion) stability plan for the next two years to offset the effects of the global financial slump.

So far, EU member states have committed more than 200 billion euros (US$254 billion) in total to prevent their individual economies from a deep recession, but all the stimulus plans were carried out on national levels, similar to the situation when EU countries fought on their own in their initial reaction to the financial crisis.

In a bid to forge a coordinated EU response to the economic crisis, the European Commission unveiled on Wednesday a significant stimulus package worth 200 billion euros (US$254 billion).

The sum amounts to 1.5 percent of the EU's gross domestic product (GDP), with 1.2 percent coming from national measures by EU governments and the rest from EU funding, which was higher than the 130 billion euros (US$165 billion) previously suggested by the Commission.

As European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso put it, the plan does not mean EU countries should react in a uniform fashion, but provides a framework to coordinate national measures of different member states.

"Every member state is called upon to take major measures good for its own citizens and good for the rest of Europe," the Commission said.

Under the plan, EU member states are encouraged to raise public spending, lower taxes and cut interest rates to boost their economies and those short-term measures should be taken in line with long-term structural reforms.

The commission warned that lack of coordination could lead to negative spill-over effects, which means actions in one country may clash with measures taken elsewhere in the 27-nation bloc.

"If the impulse is not coordinated, one plus one might not equal two, but less, even zero. If it is coordinated, one plus one may equal three," EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said on Wednesday.

EU finance ministers are expected to draw on the Commission's proposal to hammer out a common battle plan, but they can hardly see eye to eye with each other.

Critically, the biggest hurdle proved to be Germany, the largest economy within the EU and which has been reluctant to support any EU coordinated action for fear that it may be called to make a large contribution.

Before meeting his EU counterparts, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck poured cold water on the commission's plan on Sunday.

"I think it is not candid to give the impression that we can fight this recession with state cash," he told Der Spiegel magazine in an interview published Saturday, "The Germans do not have to commit to every European proposal whose capability to support the economy is questionable."

Germany is also under pressure to expand its national stimulus plan, which only involves 32 billion euros (US$40.64 billion) and was deemed insufficient by economists. But Berlin has been resisting the call, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel warning against a stimulus race in the EU.

A Financial Times article said on Sunday that Germany's boycott of a coordinated European response to the crisis has become serious and persistent, and German complacency is posing a serious threat.

Although the commission's plan contains many of the right policy recommendations, the key test will be how to convince EU member states to support and implement the plan in word and deed, argued Fabian Zuleeg and Hans Martens, two analysts at the European Policy Center, a Brussels-based think tank.

(Xinhua News Agency December 2, 2008)