EU leaders are meeting to try to come up with a European response to the global economic crisis.

The 15 countries that all use the euro as currency are trying to decide a plan of action on Saturday in Paris, the French capital, to strengthen individual efforts made over the past few days.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, have held a news conference in the city.

Al Jazeera's Mark Seddon, speaking from Paris, said: "It's kind of back to the future. It was barely a week ago that President Sarkozy and the Dutch were talking about a Euro response, a European-wide bailout plan."

But the Germans shot down the idea.

"In the days since, we have seen individual responses," Seddon said.

Prickly relationship

Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy, whose relationship is often described as prickly, were together at a ceremony on Saturday before the leaders' meeting.

"The speculation is about what they may say to us afterwards," Seddon said.

"All ears and eyes will be on them to see whether they will talk beyond financial regulation to a new attempt at a Europe-wide bailout going into this meeting with the other EU leaders."

Seddon said that the meeting is crucial to having any chance of putting rescue measures in place before the markets re-open on Monday.

"The speculation here in Paris is that [there may be] some agreement to model a Eurozone bailout recovery package very much on what the British did.

"In other words a partial nationaisation of the banks - we've already seen that. But major re-capitalisation, moves to get the banks to lend again to each other," Seddon said.

He said that leaders appeared to believe that an international, rather than national, response to the crisis was now needed.