Debt crisis: Spanish borrowing costs soar despite fresh audit putting pressure on eurogroup Today, as George Osborne joins the rest of the finance ministers, Europe's Big Four leaders will hold crisis talks in Rome. Angela Merkel of Germany, Francois Hollande of France, Mario Monti of Italy and Mariano Rajoy of Spain are under intense pressure to come up with "decisive" action to stem the crisis ahead of next week's EU summit. Before the meeting there was impatience that Spain had not requested help already but left the markets in limbo instead. Michael Noonan, Irish finance minister, said: "If Spain made an application the weekend the agreement was made and they quantified their needs, I think that might have eased the market concern. But while there is no request and while there is no certainty about the amount being requested, I think that makes the markets jittery. Mr de Guindos said: "We have already started working on the design of the aid with the Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. We will present the request in the next few days. Another audit of Spain's banks is due in September. Experts welcomed Madrid's efforts to expose the real state of its banks but plenty warned the numbers were deteriorating fast. The economist Nicholas Spiros said: "In the space of a fortnight we have already gone from a €37bn forecast for Spanish banks" capital needs in a stressed scenario to a €52-62bn one. This begs the question: what will the more detailed audit in September reveal? The finance ministers were urged to boost the role of the eurozone's bailout funds - to help both Spain and Greece. Brussels has not yet specified whether it will use the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) or its permanent successor, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to lend to Spanish banks. Under the terms of the ESM, which have not yet been fully ratified, the fund would leap-frog private creditors in seniority which could dissuade capital market lending to Spain even more. The funds may also be deployed to buy Spanish and Italian debt to bring down their yields in the secondary market.