Monti took over as the head of a technocratic government in Italy last November amid rising fears that Italy could fall victim to the European debt crisis. So far, economists have mostly backed Monti's efforts to pay down debt by reducing government spending and increasing taxes.

But the unpopluar austerity measures have also eaten into Monti's support levels among Italian residents, The yields on Italian bonds have also started to inch higher even though Italy's fiscal health has remained more or less stable.

The culprit? Analysts say investors are worried about how the dramatic problems in Greece and Spain will impact Italy.

In Greece, shifting political power has limited the government's ability to pass austerity measures the European Union claims to be necessary to remain in the 17-nation euro zone, while banks struggling in Spain are sparking worries that Spain could be the next European country pushed off the edge of economic collapse.

"The situation in Italy hasn't changed substantially in recent weeks and most economists understand that the country's debt situation will be resolved over the course of months and years and not days or weeks," said Javier Noriega, chief economist with investment banker Hildebrandt and Ferrar.

"But developments outside Italy have taken a toll on Italy's economic health," Noriega said.

Though yields in secondary markets for benchmark Italian 10-year bonds closed down slightly Thursday, retreating 0.7 percent points to 5.90 percent, they have inched close to the 6-percent threshold this week, a level Rome has not seen since late January. Bond yields fell as low as 4.84 percent in mid-March.

Bond yields, which are considered a key barometer of an economy's health, are the cost the government must pay in order to borrow money.

Speaking in Brussels, Monti said Italy was being punished because the eurozone has failed to act fast enough to confront the growing economic problems.

Italy was suffering, Monti said, "because of an overall weakness in the system and not for any specific weakness in the country."

Speaking to an economic forum, Monti said that the EU's insistence on austerity measures centered on reduced government services, increasing tax revenue, and limited stimulus from the European Central Bank threatened to spark a backlash that would in the end hurt recovery prospects for the beleaguered euro zone.

"Europe should accelerate its efforts (to confront the economic crisis) in order to limit contagion, not simply because a huge financial ... crisis would be a frightening event, but even more because if this happens it would dismantle the support for sustained fiscal discipline," Monti said.

Ignazio Visco, the governor of the Bank of Italy, echoed Monti's remarks in an address to the bank's annual assembly in Rome. Visco said the country's weak economic growth would not improve with the country's tax burden so high.

He said the austerity measures have been a necessary tool in stemming the worst impacts of the debt crisis, but "we have paid the price by raising the tax burden to a level incompatible with rapid growth."