Monti calls for EU summit to confront populism

Italian Premier Mario Monti on Saturday proposed a special European summit to confront growing populism in the face of the continent's financial crisis.

"We are in a dangerous phase," Monti said on the sidelines of the Ambrosetti Forum on Lake Como after meeting with European Union Council President Herman van Rompuy.

He said a divisive populism is present in nearly all eurozone countries, and that it aims to divide nations at a moment when the impetus is for greater integration to help safeguard the euro currency and restore health to the EU's economy.

"It is paradoxical and sad that in a phase in which one was hoping to complete the integration instead there is forming a dangerous counter-phenomenon that aims at the disintegration," Monti said, according to the LaPresse news agency.

The premier offered Rome as a venue for a summit confronting the tendency. Van Rompuy said he supported the proposal.

Source: Associated Press