Commenting this morning as Eurozone finance minsters prepare to meet to start putting flesh on the bones of the European Council conclusions of 29th June, Guy Verhofstadt (Liberal and Democrat group leader in the European Parliament) said:

"Mario Monti is right to criticise those Member States who are now trying to unravel the consensus reached by EU leaders at the end of June. We have been waiting for two years and over 20 summits for a clear plan to end the crisis. Now that there is finally some agreement on the direction of travel, and an initially positive response from the bond markets, it is irresponsible and short-sighted in the extreme to undermine the latest efforts and return us to square one. The rising yields on Spanish and Italian bonds over the weekend are a direct result of this."

"Those countries who are still hesitant about the need for a structural solution to reducing debt levels across the Eurozone, involving some form of debt mutualisation, should ask themselves whether an open-ended commitment to topping up the ESM after every bailout is more appealing to their taxpayers."

"Until the 17 members of the Eurozone can show fiscal and political unity over the management of the Single currency, it will continue to lack the long-term stability that is in everyone's best interests."

The European Parliament last week called on the Commission to table concrete legislative proposals by September, based on the political agreement reached at the summit."Essentially it is all a matter of restoring and sustaining liquidity as a mark of investor confidence. The US and Japan have high public debts but a coherent fiscal governance structure and no problem accessing capital whilst Slovenia has one of the best public sector accounts in the eurozone yet still faces problems.""The clock is counting down to midnight for a permanent solution to the debt crisis. Unless everyone now backs wholeheartedly the plan outlined and endorsed at the last summit, there will not be a Eurozone left to defend."