Yet more conversations with meaningful nods and extensive lip service commitments paid to 'working together as one' OR a trailblazing event full of agreements over affirmative and positive action to tackle the debt crisis? The outcome of the two-day long forthcoming EU summit is anyone's guess.

After already pooh-poohing Eurobonds, Germany's Finance Minister Angela Merkel addressed her own parliament today, saying "When we supply the fiscal pact with a powerful pact for growth and employment in Brussels tomorrow, structural reforms of the member states for more competitiveness will remain at the top of the growth agenda. They are the key to effective growth. And she praised other leaders saying "Italy with Mario Monti has embarked on a path of solid public finances, growth, employment and competitiveness. Spain with Mariano Rajoy and his government has introduced important reforms in the past six months."

Monti himself has said the summit will be marked by intense negotiations and not by rubber stamping ideas from documents produced in advance of the meeting.Meanwhile Mariano Rajoy was mobbed by the press at his own parliament, everyone eager for what his thinking is on the summit. He said the key issue is to try and make decisions about how his country and others can finance themselves on the international markets to achieve stability.

With market analysts seeing Spain's formal bank bailout this week as a precursor to a full state bailout, there's certainly much to thrash out when the EU leaders started at this meeting.

Written & Presented by Marverine Cole