The leaders of Europe’s three largest nations, Britain, France, and Germany have issued a joint call for “binding rules” to rein in bankers’ bonuses as the finance ministers of the G-20 group of nations preparing to meet in London this weekend. A joint letter from the U.K.’s Gordon Brown, Germany’s Angela Merkel, and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy signal that Europe is uniting behind specific proposals to link the size of bonuses to fixed pay and to bank performance over long periods. According to the Financial Times, the three leaders also came out in favor of deferring awards and clawbacks in case of negative outcomes. The move is designed to put pressure on the U.S. and other big nations to come up with workable proposals that can be implemented quickly, said the report. “Even the English understand that you have to regulate, you have to impose limits and that there are unacceptable scandals,” Sarkozy said. France and the U.K. already have bonus rules in place but the U.K.’s chancellor, Alistair Darling, said “international cooperation is needed to prevent banks playing off one country against another.”