The International Monetary Fund has urged European leaders to act quickly to resolve the debt crisis.
It said this evening that the crisis threatens the global economy and that a solution cannot be delayed any further.
The seriousness of the eurozone debt crisis has been underlined this evening with this intervention by the IMF.
While it had called for a European solution to a European problem - until now it had not said how it thought the crisis should be dealt with.
It is now telling Europe what it thinks should be done.
The IMF wants the euro's bailout fund to be beefed up and also that it be allowed to buy government debt on the secondary bonds markets.
The Fund also wants EU governments to delegate more power to centralised institutions and to seek more economic integration.
A senior IMF official is quoted this evening as saying 'we need more Europe not less'.
Meanwhile the first signs of a crack in the position taken by the European Central Bank seem to have emerged.
The governor of the Austrian Central Bank has said that a short-term default in Greece would not necessarily lead to disastrous repercussions for the eurozone.
The comments sit uneasily with those by ECB president Jean Claude Trichet, who says the bank will not tolerate a default of any kind.
Merkel downplays euro summit prospects
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that the eurozone summit on a second Greek rescue scheduled for Thursday will not produce a 'spectacular' knock-out blow to the EU's sovereign debt crisis.
'After more than a year of discussing Greece there is currently a great yearning for one finalising, single big step, something ideally that is spectacular,' Ms Merkel said after talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
Ms Merkel said: 'The words being used are clear - a large debt restructuring, euro bonds, a transfer union, and lots more. This creates the impression that everything is going to be okay afterwards, that the issue of Greece and the issue of the euro can be put to one side.'
She said this way of thinking was 'negligent' or reflected a 'lack of patience' or both.
'If you are going to be politically responsible, and this is what the (German) government wants and takes seriously, you know that such a spectacular, single step cannot responsibly be made, including on Thursday,’ she added.
'Instead, we need a controlled and manageable process of successive steps and measures, a process that has one single purpose, one paramount aim, namely finally getting to the root of this problem.'
Speaking in the Dáil, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said that he hoped the forthcoming summit would initiate a controlled process of gradual steps towards dealing with the debt crisis.
The Taoiseach said while the meeting was clearly an important one, he did not expect any one spectacular measure to deal with the situation.
Mr Kenny said he would not be reconvening the Dáil to discuss the summit's outcome as the House had currently been sitting for the longest post-election term in recent years.
He was responding to Independent TD Shane Ross who said his comments suggested that the summit was a recipe for another postponement and 'a fudge' which would not be accepted by the markets.
Earlier, Mr Kenny told the Dáil it was clear that the problems are systemic, affecting all of Europe.
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said history may look at the last two EU summits as a collective failure.
Mr Kenny said last night that he hoped that EU leaders would be able to flesh out issues that Ireland had raised such as a reduction in interest rates, greater flexibility and the maturity dates for the loans.
