[Al Jazeera] The European Union will not survive if it fails to overcome a debt crisis plaguing the euro single currency area, the bloc's president Herman Van Rompuy has said.Hours from a meeting of finance ministers in Brussels on Tuesday, Van Rompuy said that the EU and eurozone were in danger from alarm in the financial markets.
The meeting was called to grapple with an exploding debt crisis that has already brought Greece to its knees, and now threatens Ireland and Portugal.
"We all have to work together in order to survive with the eurozone, because if we don't survive with the eurozone we will not survive with the European Union," Van Rompuy said in a speech in Brussels.
He said he was "very confident" the EU would overcome the crisis, thanks to "courageous measures" taken by states "to reduce expenses at a time of populism, despite massive protests on the street and knowing they risk electoral defeat."
Van Rompuy's stark warning raises the stakes after an admission by Ireland that it was holding talks about a possible rescue, six months after international partners had to rush to aid Greece with a $150bn bailout.
Portugal has also warned that it is at "high" risk of needing financial support, unable to borrow money on open markets other than at prohibitive rates, partly because tension over Ireland is increasing pressure on other weak eurozone members.
George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, also facing new problems over conditions attached to the rescue for Greece, has said he has support from Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, to re-schedule bailout repayments.
The three countries are only the weakest links in a chain of debt coursing through the 16 nations that share the euro currency, with almost every other member of the European Union bursting at fiscal seams.
Ireland "is under pressure from some other EU politicians and even the ECB to consider requesting funds to provide further reinforcement for its banking system and so reduce contagion risks," Julian Callow of London-based Barclays Capital Research said.
He said that from the European Central Bank's perspective, a $60bn European Financial Stability Fund "can be used to support banks, provided that the funding is requested by governments and channelled via them."
Despite an EU official telling the AFP news agency exactly the opposite on Monday, stressing that the loan guarantees are not available for banks, Callow warned that "Ireland has the biggest skew in terms of requesting ECB financing," signalling $176bn of demands on the Irish central bank in October.