On Wednesday, the heads of government of the member states of the EU met with the objective of taking final decisions on how to resolve the crisis in the eurozone and in particular, the issue of sovereign debt of a number of states, most notably Greece, Italy and Spain.

This meeting was a continuation of a frenetic series of meetings of the EU countries Ministers of Finance and also of the smaller eurozone, as well as heads of government, which took place last weekend.

It has been evident for a number of weeks now that whatever the EU leaders propose, the financial markets dispose, with the result that speculators have continued to act unhindered and no comprehensive solution to the eurozone problems has been found.

For a while, we have had an attempt by the political leaders to assert their authority over the financial markets, but nothing has come out of it. We have also had a number of proposals of how to address the various issues on the table. However, neither in this case has anything of substance been concluded. We have always remained in the realm of statements of intent.

We have now really come to the final countdown. The United States is placing great pressure on the EU to resolve the crisis. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has stated that Europe has never been so close to an explosion. The countries that have come under greatest pressure because of their sovereign debt are being told that the waiting game is over and there is no more space for procrastination.

Whichever way one looks at it, we are either getting on a final countdown for a solution to the eurozone crisis, or a final countdown towards the break-up of the eurozone.

Either result will have its positive points and its negative points. In the former case, that is a solution to the eurozone crisis, the virtuous will have once more to pay the bills incurred by the reckless. And I am not just referring to governments such as that of Greece.

I am also referring to the German and French banks, which seem most at risk if there were to be a default on the Greek sovereign debt.

Germans and French chuckled three years ago at the way US and UK banks had managed to pollute their balance sheets with what were called “toxic assets”.

Now it is the turn of the French and German banks to clean-up their balance sheet of the toxic assets, in the form of Greek bonds. However, after all this, the eurozone would have been saved.

In the second case, that is a break-up of the eurozone, we will have a monetary union that is effectively supported by the fiscal policies of the states that would compose it. The break-up of the monetary union is a possibility because the fiscal policies adopted by the individual member states did not match it up with expected rigour.

If countries such as Greece (not to mention Italy and Spain) were to exit the eurozone, the monetary union will encompass a smaller population, but will be stronger.

In either case we will need to adopt some strong binding rules. What we have experienced in the last three years should never be repeated. In this regard, we are also facing a final countdown. Investment banks can no longer be supported by governments to get them out of the mess they would have got themselves into and so should be facing a final countdown.

A final countdown will also be made on uncontrolled public finances, as governments will be forced to agree on common fiscal measures. Hopefully, the final countdown will also be sounded to operators in the financial markets, whose only objective is short- term gains at the expense of productive activities.

In Malta we just watch and observe. Any economic slowdown, any write-off of sovereign debt, any further crisis in the financial markets is bound to have a negative impact on our economy, even if not directly and not immediately. We have been in this situation in the last three years and we have faced up to the challenges successfully. Some individuals have been hurt, either because of a loss of income or a loss if wealth, or a loss of job, but collectively we seem to have weathered the storm.

Having said this, we cannot exclude ourselves from the final countdown that the eurozone is facing. We should seek to influence the decisions taken within the EU structures. As a final note, I state unequivocally that Malta would have been in a far worse situation had we not joined the Euro in January 2008.