"The UK is sceptical about au EU-wide tax," he said during the Group of Seven industrialised nations meeting in the southern French port. Detractors say such a tax would inevitably weaken the EU by diverting financial activity elsewhere, quite apart from the difficulty of applying it in the first place.

Britain last month insisted that German and French plans for an EU-wide tax on financial transactions must be applied across the world to be effective.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011