IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn failed to persuade finance ministers from the 16-nation single currency area on Monday to increase the size of their 750bn financial safety net or the European Central Bank to step up government bond purchases.
"The euro zone has to provide a comprehensive solution to this problem. The piecemeal approach is not a good one," Strauss-Kahn said.
Yesterday's ministerial talks on buffeting the euro zone against a worsening sovereign debt crisis will spill into tomorrow and next week, as countries prepare a summit to rescue the euro.
Today diplomats from the 27-member states are meeting to take stock of yesterday's talks to rescue the euro and pave the way for discussions next week on a permanent EU loan facility to be up and running by 2013.
In the wake of more possible EU bailouts in Portugal and Spain, EU leaders will be meeting in Brussels again on 16 and 17 December to lay down plans for an EU loan facility to set in stone bailouts such as the ones that were granted to Greece and Ireland.
Yesterday's meeting also saw a revival of discussions on eurobonds after the head of the Eurogroup, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti called on leaders to introduce common bonds to shield the troubled currency from speculators.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble labelled talk of eurobonds "off-target and unnecessary".
Though Schäuble did not shun outright the idea of EU countries going to the market together, he insisted that differing interest rates on government borrowing were a way of imposing fiscal discipline.
The Financial Times Deutschland quoted Schäuble as envisaging a possible handover of fiscal policy from the Bundestag to an EU entity if other countries were to do the same.
An EU source insists that German reluctance over the idea, which will also require a change to the EU Treaties, will send it to the grave.
"For treaty change, you need unanimity. Germany is opposed to eurobonds so you have the answer to your question," the source explained.
According to Juncker and Tremonti's plan, eurobonds would be issued by an EU debt agency and they would finance 50% of all bonds sold by EU countries – or 100% when debt markets cut off troubled economies, such as Ireland and Portugal.
Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, who currently enjoy relatively stable borrowing costs, were the most critical of eurobonds at yesterday's talks.
Ministers also rubber-stamped an Irish bailout, promised to tackle tax fraud and discussed reforming pensions and banking regulation.
