Change EU treaty to stabilize bloc, says Trichet

PARIS (Reuters) - European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said that the European Union's treaty should be changed to prevent one member state from destabilizing the rest of the bloc, and urged stronger euro zone governance.

"In my view it is necessary to change the treaty to prevent one member state from straying and creating problems for all the others," Trichet told Europe 1 radio on Sunday.

But he added that he expected existing governance rules would be applied much more rigorously in the future, even without a change in the treaty.

All advanced economies were being affected by a crisis at the moment but Europe's particular problem was that some countries had not respected treaty rules, Trichet said.

"We don't have a federal budget, we don't have a political federation so we have to fully respect the constraints and the mutual supervision rules that exist in the euro zone," he said.

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq and Gus Trompiz; Editing by Sophie Walker)