Europe is apparently moving closer to a fiscal union to address the lack of central coordination of the eurozone's debt and spending policies. That lack has been blamed for the inability of zone authorities to find a solution to the debt crisis even if they had been attempting to solve it the past 18 months,.

European Central Bank officials said on Monday in Paris that the zone's leaders must move at a faster pace to address the area's debt crisis to prevent it from deteriorating. The call, made by outgoing and incoming ECB presidents Jean-Claude Trichet and Mario Draghi, came at the time that bond yield of euro nations with weak finances went up on the same day over investors' concern that the efforts to address the zone's debt crisis could fail.

The zone's political leaders agree that the main reason behind the debt contagion is the lack of federal fiscal union within the 17-member currency zone. However, Germany and some eurozone members are wary of the plan because of fear that it would undercut their national authority.

Mr Trichet, who will leave the ECB at the end of October, pushed for a federal European government with a federal Finance Ministry. Such an organization would have the power to impose decisions on nations which may have policies that go against the euro union.

Former European leaders, academicians and industrialists who gathered in Brussels supported the call for the establishment of a federal financial authority.

"It has become clear that a monetary union without some form of fiscal federalism and coordinated economic policy will not work," the group said in a statement quoted by the New York Times.

The debt crisis in the eurozone has caused the stock and bond markets to return to a gloomy situation similar to the 2008 global financial crisis. Institutional and pension fund investors have been divesting their shares of companies that have risks.

The International Monetary Fund also supported the idea of a United States of Europe.

"If today's policy makers want to successfully stay the course, they will have to press ahead with structural changes and deeper economic integration," the New York Times quoted IMF European unit Director Antonio Borge.

"To put the crisis behind us, we need more Europe, not less. And we need it now," Mr Borges said.

Garry Schinasi, a former IMF official who advises European central banks and governments, favored an organization similar to the U.S. Treasury because it could come up with proposals with a collective objective approach rather than 17 national objectives that could compete with each other.

"Instead, they fumbled around and took two baby steps forward and three backward," Mr Schinasi told the New York Times.