Beijing - The stakes have been raised ahead of a crucial European Union Summit this week.
Standard & Poor's (S&P) has warned investors and Eurozone governments that it will carry out mass downgrades of Eurozone countries if EU leaders fail to agree on how to solve the region's debt crisis by Friday.
The EU summit in Brussels, Belgium, will take place on Thursday and Friday.
The stakes are already high, and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is not the only one putting European leaders under pressure.
As he arrived in Germany on a three-day tour, key players in the debt crisis reacted to the threat by ratings agency S&P to downgrade 15 Eurozone countries, including France and Germany.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "What a ratings agency does is its own responsibility. On Thursday and Friday, we will make the decisions which we think are important and indispensable for the Eurozone and therefore contribute to the stabilisation of the Eurozone."
France and Germany want to see greater budget discipline across the Eurozone - including automatic penalties for countries that let their finances run out of control.
With European leaders preparing to discuss the planned reforms of the EU Treaty at a summit on Friday, France's Finance Minister Francois Baroin questioned the timing of S&P's shock warning.
French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said: "This announcement yesterday that puts the Eurozone under surveillance, it doesn't take into account the Franco-German proposals. So this week is important for the quality of the success and the quality of the importance of the agreement on Friday at the European summit. The rating of France and the others will depend a lot on that."
French officials say the S&P decision was made last Tuesday and also failed to take into account an Italian austerity budget package, which was welcomed by markets.
Goldman Sachs CEO Jim O'Neill said he too was baffled by the timing.
O'Neill said: "I don't think it's very sensible, considering what we're looking at later this week. If they instigate, at least in principle what the Germans are on about, it should get rid of many of the issues - from what I can tell - the S&P report talks about."
S&P says it will be watching the summit closely for political, as well as financial solutions. This after it warned that it would downgrade the 15 countries if a solution to the debt crisis is not found within 90 days.
