German Chancellor Angela Merkel returns to the front line of the European debt crisis this week as the bloc's leaders squabble over measures including bond purchases to relieve concerns the single currency may fragment.

Merkel ends her summer vacation to oversee a Cabinet meeting Aug. 15 before departing for Canada and talks with Prime Minister Stephen Harper as the spiraling crisis threatens the global economy. With policy makers awaiting a German high court decision on bailout funding next month, they're struggling to smooth divisions over a European Central Bank plan to buy the bonds of indebted nations.

“It makes no sense for the ECB to start financing” Spain and Italy, ECB Governing Council member Luc Coene said in an interview with Belgian newspapers De Tijd and L'Echo published on Aug. 11. “It would only lead to the ECB taking on the whole public debt of Spain and Italy onto its balance sheet.”