BREAKING NEWS

Diplomats: EU fails to agree on treaty change

BRUSSELS - The European Union failed to secure backing from all 27 countries to change the EU treaty at a summit on Friday, meaning any deal will now likely involve the 17 euro zone countries plus any others that want to join, three EU diplomats said.
An agreement at 27 fell through after British Prime Minister David Cameron demanded concessions that Germany and France were not willing to give, one of the officials said.
During nearly 10 hours of talks that lasted into the night, EU leaders did manage to reach agreement on a ceiling for the size of the euro zone's permanent bailout fund, the ESM, saying it would be capped at 500 billion euros.
That figure will be reviewed in July next year, when the ESM is due to come into force, the diplomats said.
The leaders also agreed to explore the idea of providing bilateral loans to the International Monetary Fund totaling 200 billion euros, with 150 billion of that coming from the euro zone , to bolster IMF resources to tackle Europe's debt crisis.