The members of parliament insist that they be given details of the proposals for the summit, in order to give Angela Merkel a green light to negotiate. But so far they have only seen the “guidelines” for the European Financial Stability Facility, without any details of proposals to leverage the fund’s €440bn into something more substantial.

They have not yet received the troika report on Greece, which is another key element.

The budget committee is due to meet this afternoon, and Wolfgang Schäuble, finance minister, is due to give evidence “sometime between 2 and 4″, according to a parliamentary official. But the finance ministry has sent the committee a letter, admitting that there are still differences over ways of leveraging the EFSF – although the ministry does not use the word “leveraging”, it talks about “the possibility of increasing the efficiency” of the fund.

The original plan was for the Bundestag budget committee to reconvene – possibly on Saturday – to consider the proposals.

Parliamentarians say if there is no detail on leveraging proposals, they may not meet to give Ms Merkel her green light, which would mean “she won’t be able to do a deal”, according to one official.

As for the EFSF guidelines, they are only in English, so the finance ministry is doing a frantic unofficial translation for the benefit of the parliamentarians. They hope to have it by midday.

The euro has retained its appeal for global investors because German government bonds – one of the few safe havens – are denominated in Europe’s single currency. However, this also means that if it were felt at some point that the various rescue pack-ages and the euro-zone transfer union were placing too great a strain on Germany’s public finances, the euro would be hit harder as a result of the crisis. The recent rise in the premiums payable to insure against a sovereign default by Germany is a warning signal that the tipping point is not too far off.

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(1) A clear timetable with deadlines for European banks to undergo new stress tests and to raise additional capital if required (first from private and national sources, but with the EFSF as a backstop), over a period of probably three to six months. A new round of stress tests would be focused upon stricter capital requirements and market-based asset valuations including of sovereign debt held on the banking book. In fact, today’s Financial Times reports that there has already been a re-examination of EU banks’ capital needs recently conducted by the EBA, which concluded that in order for the assessed institutions to reach a 9% core tier one capital ratio they would need to raise only around EUR80bn (or even less). The reason for this relatively small additional capital requirement (in comparison with other estimates of a need of EUR200bn or more) appears to be because the EBA had taken into account current market prices for sovereign debt, including markets where bonds had rallied sharply, such as Germany and the UK, but had not undertaken a full-blown stress test.

(2) Encouragement of existing schemes which guarantee bank debt to be extended beyond year-end via national support (with – potentially – the use of the EFSF also as a backstop).

(3) Details to emerge concerning plans to move towards a “leveraging” of the bulk of the EFSF’s remaining resources (which we would estimate, after deductions from the EUR440bn for the existing ‘troika’ programmes and the second proposed programme for Greece, at around EUR290-300bn). The current thinking appears to be moving towards a partial insurance scheme (based on a “first loss”) for newly issued euro area sovereign debt outside of existing programmes (mainly to address Italian and Spanish needs).

(5) A renewed commitment by heads of government to push ahead with fiscal consolidation plans accompanied by critical structural and growth-friendly economic reforms. Here we could see a more specific reform agenda proposed.

(6) ECB Securities Market Programme (the purchases of Italian and Spanish debt) to continue with the objective of aiding monetary transmission.

(7) A commitment by heads of government to revise the EU Treaty for euro area countries with a view to shifting some national sovereignty on fiscal matters to more centralized control (under Article 136 of the Lisbon Treaty, which pertains specifically to the euro area and gives power to adopt measures by qualified majority vote on budgetary discipline and economic policy). On this point, any description of the new institutional design (5) will likely remain vague and involve a complex power struggle among the European Commission, large and small member states and fiscal hawks and doves. Nonetheless, it could be that an accelerated procedure for treaty changes, including the possibility of having to rely less on unanimity and more on a qualified majority, can be used under the simplified revision procedure within the Lisbon Treaty).