Last week's EU summit deal on creating a fiscal compact is set to be dissected in Brussels and beyond with markets already responding with scepticism. MEPs travel to Strasbourg for an end-of-the-Polish-presidency roundup.

Economic governance of the eurozone comes once more on the agenda this week, as the European Commission will put forward the proposal of creating eurobonds, despite German resistance.

Billed by the G20 last week as the summit to save the euro, EU leaders will in Brussels on Sunday try to bridge divisions between Germany and France on how to stop Greece and Italy from sinking the single currency.

The dynamic duo at the heart of European power, Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, are to meet once again on Sunday in Berlin and thrash out their substantial differences over how to respond to the ever-worsening eurozone debt crisis, a black hole of a threat that US President Barack Obama has described as a danger to the global economy.

This week see the return of a full institutional house in Brussels after the long summer holidays but the eurozone crisis that blackened much of August looms larger than ever.