EU states raised doubts about the European Commission's planned 130 billion euro ($163 billion) growth package on Thursday, with Berlin criticising its tax cut proposals and Prague rejecting the idea of bloc-wide measures.
Germany has said the Commission, the EU's executive, plans to request that member states contribute about 1 percent of the bloc's gross domestic product to the package to help the 27-nation EU fight recession sparked by the financial crisis.
The plan, to be unveiled next Wednesday, won the backing of Spain, whose Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said his country was ready to commit 1 percent of GDP to a fiscal stimulus programme.
"We are going to unite efforts, combine plans and, I hope, give a strong and combined response," Zapatero said.
Berlin said it welcomed the planned measures overall, but said it saw the package as a coordinated summary of national stimulus programmes, rather than a wide-reaching supplement to which member states had to contribute new funds.
"It can't be an on-top programme," a spokesman for the German finance ministry said, but added he did not rule out that the package could include some new Europe-wide elements.
Czech Finance Minister Miroslav Kalousek, whose country has been less affected by the economic crisis than other EU nations, said he had no details of the EU plans but would not support them in any case.
"For the time being I do not have detailed information about this proposal. But I am not sympathetic to it," the daily Hospodarske Noviny quoted Kalousek as saying.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said any criticism of the plan was premature as it was not yet finalised and no agreement had been reached on the size of the stimulus. The programme will be "timely, targeted and temporary", he said.
"What we need is a coordinated European Union response, big enough, bold enough to work in the short term, yet strategic and sustainable enough to turn the crisis into an opportunity in the longer term," he told reporters in Brussels.
Barroso was scheduled to discuss the programme late on Wednesday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Austria's central bank governor, Ewald Nowotny, told the Financial Times newspaper that spending 1 percent of GDP to combat the euro zone's first recession was sensible and Germany could even commit 2 percent of GDP for the purpose.
The 15-nation single currency area plunged into recession in the third quarter, and European carmakers have been cutting jobs and stepping up calls for up to 40 billion euros of aid.
GERMANY AGAINST TAX CUTS
A German government paper obtained by Reuters showed the measures foresee the European Investment Bank (EIB) contributing 2 billion euros for the bloc's struggling car industry.
The EU proposes a public-private partnership for the auto sector to boost green technologies and supply-side measures such as lower taxes on environmentally friendly cars, it said.
The German government paper said Berlin welcomed some of the EU executive's proposals, including plans to make cash from the European Social Fund available more quickly to boost jobs.
But Berlin said it rejected proposals for member states to cut taxes in a bid to boost growth and ease the burden of the downturn on citizens with low incomes.
"The Commission's request for member states to lower tax on low incomes and to reduce VAT rates on work-intensive services cannot be supported from the German side," the paper said.
The EU package includes an increase in the capital of the EIB to allow support of small and medium-sized companies beyond the 30 billion euros now planned.
