Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is bringing two messages to officials in Berlin next week: be more receptive to potential market response to policy moves, and work quicker on the massive European rescue program that German lawmakers blessed Friday, approving the country's €147.6 billion ($182.93 billion) contribution.

Mr. Geithner, who is slated to head to China for two days of talks next week on economics and politics, added a European leg to his trip, while European Union finance ministers and others in Brussels debated a German plan to rein in fiscal profligacy in the 16-nation euro zone and the wider 27-nation EU

Those objectives contain developing a permanent mechanism to help euro-zone Governments in catastrophe and to lessen the economic imbalances that have left Southern European economies less competitive than Germany and other countries in the North.

The fiscal task force presided over by Mr. Van Rompuy is charged with proposing rigid changes to the bloc's rules on fiscal discipline. They are of most import to the euro zone, whose members are required by a pact to abide by limits to Government debt and deficit, though those limits are routinely flouted.

Mr. Van Rompuy and other officials said their first priorities were measures that could be implemented quickly, without the year’s long process of revising the union's foundational treaties. One snag is that the changes would have to be approved by all 27 EU countries, not just those that use the euro.