Pressure on Italy in eurozone struggle

Germany and France have turned on Italy to demand further action to boost growth and reduce its huge debt, as leaders of the eurozone struggled to agree on how to boost their rescue fund to stop contagion in the sovereign debt markets before a Wednesday deadline. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, held tough talks with Silvio Berlusconi, at the start of the day-long summit in Brussels, Sunday insisting that he take more radical measures to restore the trust of investors,reported the Financial Times Monday. Confidence in Italy’s public finances is critical to preventing the spread of the Greek debt crisis across the eurozone, but France and Germany are worried that Berlusconi is not taking tough enough measures. The clash with Berlusconi came as 27 European Union leaders negotiated the three pillars of a package aimed at stemming the crisis. They agreed on the need for European banks to find ?108bn in new capital to persuade investors that they can withstand the pressures of the sovereign debt crisis. Eurozone leaders debated without reaching a conclusion two potential models to expand the financial firepower of their 440 bn euro European financial stability facility – the eurozone rescue fund – using financial engineering to leverage the core capital by up to five times. The elements of the package are supposed to be decided by twin EU and eurozone summits on Wednesday. Non-members of the eurozone, led by Britain, Poland and Sweden, insisted they come back to Brussels to sign off on the bank recapitalisation plan before the final eurozone summit. Sarkozy said there were "more long hours of discussion to come" before a final accord could be reached but expressed his absolute determination – with Merkel – to produce "solid and durable" common proposals by Wednesday.