Luxembourg -- European Union leaders will take "all the necessary steps" to ensure the stability of the bloc's financial system and protect citizens' savings, a joint statement issued on their behalf by the French presidency of the EU said Monday.

Such measures would include the injection of liquidity by European central banks, bailouts for troubled banks and guarantees for deposits, the joint statement said.

But how those measures would be applied remained in doubt as the finance ministers of the 15 countries that use the euro met in Luxembourg amidst tumbling stock markets and growing fears as to the safety of Europe's banks.

"We should try to improve the situation in the inter-bank lending markets, easing tensions that are creating difficulties for the banks that are solvent," EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said as the meeting began.

"My preference would be a common position of the different EU member states how to have an effect on this specific and difficult situation," Spanish Finance Minister Pedro Solves said.

In their unprecedented statement, the top leaders of the EU's 27 member states called for "coordination and close cooperation" in dealing with the effects of the global credit crunch.

As stock markets tumbled across Europe, eurozone finance ministers agreed there should be a European response to the crisis, instead of the state-by-state actions that have prevailed so far.

"It's extremely important that European countries use similar principles in how they treat banks in problems (sic), for example, how they intervene, what time they intervene, what policy measures they are prepared to apply," Dutch Finance Minister Wouter Bos said.

Almunia also echoed the call, saying "We should have a common approach, coordinated action, to avoid unilateral decisions that create negative spillovers."

But the decision by the German government on Sunday to offer a blanket savings guarantee to private depositors has piled the pressure on other EU member states to follow suit.

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