The message came from Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin and Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, who arrived in Brussels to discuss a pan-European plan to bolster demand by spending 200 billion euros (S$385.7 billion) of public money.
'We will not take part in a competition to outdo one another with an endless list of new proposals, in a senseless contest over billions,' Dr Merkel said, in what looked like a barb directed at French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Mr Steinbrueck told reporters that Germany had already unveiled two plans worth 31 billion euros, or 1.25 per cent of its gross domestic product, to tackle the downturn.
'That is apparently not being registered by many who are observing us. Furthermore, we are not obliged to copy what all other countries are doing,' he said.
Mr Sarkozy had criticised Dr Merkel's lukewarm reaction last week to the pan-European stimulus plan proposed by the European Commission, saying: 'While France is working, Germany is thinking.'
The European Union's executive Commission proposed last Wednesday that EU countries spend an extra 1.2 per cent of GDP from their budgets, mainly in 2009, to boost investment and consumer demand and thus limit the downturn.
Finance ministers from the 15 euro zone countries were meeting in Brussels on Monday and the talks were due to be widened the following day to ministers from all 27 EU nations.
France, the euro zone's second-biggest economy after Germany, has hit the EU's budget deficit ceiling of 3 per cent of GDP and wants Berlin to commit more. Higher German demand helps other EU members via the common market for goods and services.
France is to unveil its own stimulus plan, worth some 1 per cent of gross domestic product or 19 billion euros, this week.
'Lemmings'
Mr Steinbrueck defended Berlin's stance, in media interviews ahead of the talks as well as on arrival in Brussels.
'Just because all the lemmings have chosen the same path, it doesn't automatically make that path the right one,' he told Der Spiegel in an interview.
'That does not mean the Germans have to buy into every European suggestion if they can't see what it will do for the economy. Especially, as Germany always ends up having to pay the most.' Germany has said its own plan is already more than the Commission proposal would demand of it.
Euro zone hopeful Poland, which announced its own 24 billion euro stability and growth package over the weekend, sided with Germany on fiscal prudence, pledging its budget deficit next year would not increase as a result of the plan.
Spain, on the other hand, unveiled an additional 11 billion euro stimulus plan last week, taking the country's total extra spending to more than 50 billion euros to fight a recession it is widely expected to enter at the end of this year.
This will take Spain's budget gap well above the EU limit for years, but EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said on Saturday that was permissible as long as Spain's steps were temporary and reversible.
He said on Monday coordination was essential in Europe when it came to the response to recession. -- REUTERS