O.E.C.D. Chief Urges Europe to Increase Euro Firewall to 1 Trillion Euros BRUSSELS - The European Union must increase its financial firewall to €1 trillion to restore market confidence in the euro zone and prevent the spread of fiscal contagion, the head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Angel Gurría, said Tuesday. Mr. Gurría's comments came a day after Germany took a big step toward building a bigger financial firewall by dropping its opposition to bringing the Continent's total bailout capacity to more than €690 billion, or $916 billion. That could help stop the spread of the crisis to major economies like Spain. "The mother of all firewalls should be in place," Mr. Gurría told a news conference Tuesday morning in Brussels. Even so, Mr. Gurría warned that the current level of political commitment to the rescue funds was not enough. He also called for a more ambitious program of changes in product and labor markets, tax systems and education, and he said many such changes would stimulate growth in the short term. "Decisive action to restore confidence and support demand is needed now," Mr. Gurría said in a statement issued ahead of his presentation of an O.E.C.D. survey of the euro area in Brussels. "Europe is stalling," he said in the statement. It needs to get out of first gear and make growth the number one priority. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said Monday at a news conference in Berlin that her government remained determined that a permanent European rescue fund should be capped at €500 billion. Germany also was hesitant to commit more money before countries that might eventually need assistance, including Italy and Spain, showed they were serious about removing barriers to competition and other impediments to growth, said Silvio Peruzzo, an economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland. "The German strategy has been pretty clear," he said. But under the new flexibility indicated by Ms. Merkel, the temporary fund's lending program might be allowed to continue without counting against the new €500 billion fund, known as the European Stability Mechanism, when it goes into operation in July. Deploying unused sums from the temporary fund, and not counting its outstanding loans against the new fund would effectively bring total lending power to about €692 billion. Under existing plans, the temporary fund "will run out in the middle of next year, just as planned," Ms. Merkel told reporters at her party headquarters.