The president of the European Commission has warned that the coming months will pose significant financial challenges.

Jose Manuel Barroso, and the French Prime Minister, Francois Fillon, both at a European Popular Party convention in Italy, agreed that some European countries would be harder hit than others. But they insisted joint action was the only answer.

“We want to see all the EU countries adopt, at the next Council of Europe meeting, a clear political line on financial stability,” said Francois Fillon. “We need transparent controls and, at the same time, coordinated economic policy. I think that if we agree that, we can show, as we have with the Georgian crisis, that Europe works.”

But the economic volatility is just another headache for Barroso, still struggling to deal with the political stumbling blocks thrown up by the Irish ‘No’ to the Lisbon Treaty.

Jose Manuel Barroso said: “For a long time now the Commission has been proposing that we should have a strong European approach to these problems, but we have to take the first steps towards that global approach.”

Brussels acknowledges that the biggest risk is pessimism .

The meeting of the European Popular Party which both leaders were attending was dominated by sub-prime woes.

Copyright © 2012 euronews