The list is headed by Greece, Venezuela and Ireland, while the stable economies of Norway, Finland and Sweden come at the end. The ratings are derived from the price of a credit-default swap for each country - a sort of insurance policy taken out by investors against the chance of a government defaulting on its debts. The more likelihood of default, the higher the CDS price. Using the CDS price, together with other indicators, CMA has calculated an index of the probability of default. Greece, at the top of the list, is ranked at 58.8; Norway, at the bottom, is at 2.1, while Belgium stands at 17.9.

The problem is more important than rankings on a table. As negotiations to form a new government stagger on, the federal administration of Yves Leterme has had to face the prospect of cutting €4 billion of public spending, as well as the possibility of disaster when the time comes to raise money on the capital markets.

Last week, Portugal, one of the countries under attack by speculators, staged a bond auction; the result was considered a success simply because the interest rate at which the financial markets were prepared to take on government paper was slightly lower - at 6.71% - than the 7% rate which had been expected, as well as lower than the 6.8% obtained at its last auction last year. The issue was a success only relative to the potential disaster it might have been: by comparison, US Treasury bonds offer interest of only 3.35%. Nevertheless, stock markets breathed a sigh of relief.

It's amid the current climate of hair- trigger anxiety that Belgium is preparing its own venture onto the capital markets. On 31 January, the government's Debt Agency plans to offer an issue of €4.5-€5.5 billion in state bonds on the financial markets. To do so, it needs to convince institutional investors that a Belgian bond is an attractive prospect. As usual, the agency works with a number of major banks as intermediaries, such as BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank. The sale takes the form of an auction, with buyers bidding on the interest rate they would be willing to accept for a given amount of the debt.

Last week the interest on Belgian 10-year bonds went up to 4.27%, far less than the Portuguese figure, but still high enough to induce vertigo in government circles. At the same time, the difference between the rate on Belgian and on German bonds - the so-called spread - opened up to an unprecedented 139 points. As a rule of thumb, with Germany being the most trusted European economy, the wider the spread, the fewer investors are attracted by the bonds.

The problem is not yet, as was the case with Greece and Ireland, that investors are offloading Belgian paper. However, they are not showing much interest in what little there is on sale, a reflection of market jitters regarding the eurozone as a whole. Not an encouraging sign for an issue that will be at least three times as big as that of Portugal.

But the government needs to borrow the money, and it will have to accept whatever rates it can get. If those turn out to be higher than expected, the Debt Agency enters into a vicious circle, as higher interest leads to more debt, which leads to the need to issue more paper to service the debt. In the end, the burden falls on the taxpayer. "All of our effort to save a couple of billion extra would then have been for nothing," commented federal budget minister Guy Vanhengel.

The figures are dizzying: for the whole year 2011, according to projections made in December, the government needs to borrow a total of €82.23 billion, including almost €15 billion to plug the hole in the budget, €24 billion to pay out on bonds reaching their term and nearly €40 billion to refinance running debts. That's 26.6% of GDP for the coming year.

Before the Belgian sale, the governments of Spain, Italy and Portugal will have gone to the markets again. The four countries are seen as the weakest in the eurozone, other than Ireland and Greece. The outcomes of their auctions - for a total of more than €26 billion - will give a strong indication of the likely success of the Belgian offer - if there is any interest left at all.