"It was an indispensable precondition to reassure our partners," government spokeswoman Valerie Pecresse told France 2 television.

"We must build the widest possible consensus and the first building block of that consensus, is obviously a common position" between France and Germany, she added.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the eurozone's key players, agreed on a "common position" after late-night talks in Berlin just hours before an EU summit convenes in Brussels to tackle the debt crisis.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011