Gallows humor was rife among the grandees of European integration at the annual conference of the Friends of Europe think-tank on "the state of the union" last week.

Weary cynicism surrounds the summit of the 27 EU leaders on October 23, their sixth attempt this year to draw a line under the euro zone crisis that has led to bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal and is now singeing Italy and Spain.

They trumpeted a "comprehensive response" back in March, but, due mainly to German caution, adopted a catalog of half-measures described by British Prime Minister David Cameron last week as "a bit too little, a bit too late".

In July, with bond market contagion spreading for the first time to Italy, the euro zone's third biggest economy, leaders of the 17-nation single currency area agreed on a second bailout for Greece involving "voluntary" writedowns for private bondholders and more powers for their EFSF rescue fund.

Traders quickly spotted that the accord would take months to implement and might be derailed in any of the 17 national parliaments that had to approve it, or by Greece's failure to achieve its fiscal targets. Confidence evaporated.

Spanish and Italian borrowing costs were driven so high that the European Central Bank had to intervene in emergency in August to buy those countries' bonds and force yields down.

After weeks of bruising debate, first in the German then in the Slovak parliaments, and haggling with Finland over its demand for collateral on Greek loans, the beefed-up 440-billion-euro European Financial Stability Facility is finally ready to act.