Italy and Spain last night threatened to block “everything” at a crisis summit to save the European Union’s single currency unless they got immediate eurozone aid to bring down their borrowing costs.”
David Cameron left the Brussels summit at 1am local time, with nine other non-euro EU leaders as the 17 other eurozone member states continued in an emergency session to try and overcome the deadlock.
Spain and Italy blocked a flagship €120 billion “growth pact” as Mario Monti, the Italian Prime Minister, warned that there would be gridlock unless the EU mobilised its bailout funds to underwrite Italian and Spanish bonds.
As talks dragged on into the early hours of today, without any progress on long-term solution to fix the eurozone crisis, Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council of EU leaders, tried to play down the deepest splits since the European debt crisis erupted two years ago.
