Schäuble takes on Van Rompuy

Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's finance minister, had a chat with some German journalists in the plane back from a tour of Asia last night, with the result that the German press is full of what he really thinks about Herman Van Rompuy's interim report on his blueprint to strengthen the euro.

He thinks it is “vague”, “too timid” and, at least partly, “going in the wrong direction”.

As I blogged yesterday, Van Rompuy has deliberately left out any reference to the need for changes to the EU treaties and Schäuble thinks that's a mistake too.

So what would Schäuble propose instead? He wants the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs to have much greater powers, with the ability to demand that national governments change their budgets without finance ministers being able to block him – in a similar way to the powers given to the competition commissioner.

He also wants a stronger role for the European Parliament, with changes made so that only MEPs from the eurozone are able to vote on economic issues.

Schäuble's suggestions are fraught with difficulties; proposals such as giving the economics commissioner more powers will be tough to get approved by national parliaments. Unlike Van Rompuy, he hasn't had to seek the views of all member states first.

But it does throw down the gauntlet. Van Rompuy's blueprint was supposed to be ambitious. Two days before the European Council Schäuble has shown how much more ambitious it could have been.