Eurozone leaders are gathering in Brussels on Friday evening to sign off the deal agreed by their finance ministers on Sunday to rescue Greece.

But there are grumbles among some EU diplomats at the wisdom of getting the 16 leaders around the table at all. (Finance ministers could equally have been designated to give the go-ahead to the package).

“It shouldn’t take place. Everyone knows that it was on the insistence of Germany that this summit should take place,” remarked one senior diplomat, continuing: “I have heard some very nasty words about this summit.” The implication is that Sunday’s agreement will be undermined.

The broader worry is that the meeting, even assuming the 110bn euro deal (80bn euro from the other 15 members of the eurozone and 30bn euro from the IMF over three years) is given the political nod, will only serve to highlight the EU’s disunity over what to do next and its lack of leadership.

Among the most dispiriting aspects of the Greek problem – aside from the actual facts of the case – is that since October last year when the new Socialist government in Athens more than doubled its previous estimate for the country’s 2009 public deficit, the EU has dithered and prevaricated by way of an answer. Politicians have not shown the way. Instead, the markets have led the EU response, scenting the weakness behind the commitments made in both the February and March summits on Greece even as the ink was drying.

And Germany’s Angela Merkel, while perfectly entitled to push for stronger reform commitments from Athens, has contributed to the impression of  an EU in free-fall. To those outside Germany, it appeared that the debate on Greece was being led by the  Bild newspaper – the country’s best-selling tabloid. Berlin’s drawn-out finger-wagging on Greece created a void and a lack of confidence. Merkel could have helped fill it by tempering her tough rhetoric with speeches making the case for helping out Greece to a largely hostile German population.

And now with the foot-dragging having raised the prospect of the crisis spreading and the limits of a monetary union without the backing of a political and fiscal union thoroughly exposed, the question is whether member states have the political appetite for dealing with other such crises. It would seem not.

According to another EU diplomat, who dismissed the notion that the summit was a purely German idea, the meeting will focus on whether “everyone has the parliamentary requirements at home” for approving national loans to Greece and on the “future of the eurozone.”

Van Rompuy’s invitation letter suggests that there should be “an exchange of views on the lessons to be learned for the Euro area.”

Given what’s a stake, the very least the summit needs to do is to demonstrate a clear sense of political leadership and direction. And that would appear to be a very tall order at the moment.