Eurozone officials acknowledge that the EFSF is not big enough to handle a bailout of Italy or Spain, the region‘s third and fourth largest economies. Analysts say a bailout fund of around €2 trillion would be needed if the crisis spread to Italy and Spain.

A senior European official hinted that kind of firepower was being contemplated.

„We need to find a mechanism where we can turn one euro in the EFSF into five, but there is no decision on how we could do that yet,“ the official said.