Respite ends for European finance ministers facing growing crisis agenda, market pressures

"Over the last few weeks a certain amount of complacency has crept in," said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform in London. "But I don't think much that happened in the last few weeks has been very favourable." At first, investors viewed the pact, presented as a sign of the eurozone growing closer together, as a step toward growing economic cooperation or even fiscal union, said Tilford. "But when they looked a bit more closely at what that is actually going to include, it is coming up short again."