Busy euro diplomacy week ahead for Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel faces a busy week of shuttle diplomacy over the eurozone crisis, travelling to both Spain and Austria for talks, dpa cited her deputy spokesman as saying in Berlin on Friday. On Thursday, Merkel is due to meet Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Madrid and attend a conference of German and Spanish business leaders. Friday's talks in Vienna with Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann are expected to also cover euro issues, spokesman Georg Streiter said. The European Union announced last week that its president of the council, Herman Van Rompuy, would be visiting her in Berlin for lunch on Tuesday, followed by a meeting with French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday in Paris. Hollande has paid flying visits to Berlin and Madrid in recent days. The flurry of shuttle diplomacy grows out of interlocked moves to impose austerity in Greece, assess the scale of aid needed by Spain's banks and roll back punitive interest rates on Spanish and Italian government bonds. The eurozone's next move to beat the debt crisis, setting up the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), is on hold while Germany's constitutional court considers the legality of the ratification terms. It is due to hand down its verdict on September 12.