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Markets fear the prolonged austerity will be unsustainable as it stifles hopes for the economic recovery needed in the long term to pull the countries out of the red. So without a massive bailout, the prospect of one or more of eurozone nations defaulting on its debts looms over the markets, a development that risks hitting European banks hard and dealing a blow to confidence in the euro.
The message from the summit on Thursday and Friday is that the EU will not allow that to happen.
"We have added a crucial piece to this year's work to make the euro zone's economies more crisis-proof," said Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council. "We have a joint economic strategy and a political will to do whatever is required to ensure the euro-zone's stability."
The problem is that EU leaders have said the same before, repeatedly since the crisis began in Athens at the start of the year, and so far the strong words and case-by-case bailouts to Greece and Ireland have failed to calm markets for more than a few weeks.
Of particular concern at the moment is that the current bailout mechanism simply will not be big enough should the contagion spread from Greece and Ireland to the much larger Spanish economy.
Spain's debt problem is nowhere near as big as those in Ireland and Greece. Total Spanish debt in 2010 is around 64 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 140 percent in Greece and 97 percent in Ireland.