EU, under threat, shows new urgency in crisis

After a week in which the EU took drastic measures to wrest the initiative from financial markets, EU leaders are finally using a debt crisis to launch painful reforms that could prevent it becoming a spent force. After weeks of failing to resolve Greece's debt problems, the EU agreed its part in a $1-trillion rescue fund for euro zone countries early on Monday, and Spain and Portugal have bitten the bullet since then by announcing austerity plans. The unveiling of European Commission proposals for tighter budget discipline has also shown Europe is at last getting to grips with a crisis which German Chancellor Angela Merkel says is an "existential test" for the euro zone and the 27-nation EU. "There is still a long way to go. We have opened the gate. Now we have yet to go through it," said Ulrike Guerot, an analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank.