Spotlight on Italian and Spanish debt

EUROPEAN leaders return to work this week seeking to buy time for the Spanish and Italian governments to wrest control over their debt and rescue the single currency from fragmentation in its 10th anniversary year.

Some €157 billion in debt will mature in the 17-member eurozone in the first three months of 2012, according to UBS.

By the end of that period, leaders have pledged to draft a stricter rulebook for controlling government spending. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will meet in Berlin next Monday to work out the details.