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Daily Press Summary Greek leaders still unable to agree on composition of latest €11.5bn cuts package;  WSJ: IMF floats proposal for ECB taking losses on Greek bonds Standard and Poor's yesterday revised the outlook on Greece’s credit rating – already at ‘junk’ status – from stable to negative, citing the risk that Greece may fail to obtain the next instalment of loans from its EU and IMF bailout package. In an interview with German public broadcaster WDR, Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker said that Greece’s euro exit would be “manageable”, but not “desirable”. Yesterday’s WSJ claimed that the IMF wants to see further write-downs of Greece’s debt, including the possibility of losses for taxpayer-backed institutions, before releasing more bailout cash to Athens in a bid to bring down the country’s debt to 100% of its GDP by 2020, rather than 120% as originally planned. Discussions have included proposals for a 30% reduction in the value of Greek bonds held by the ECB and national central banks.   Meanwhile the latest meeting between Greece’s coalition leaders yesterday failed to produce an agreement on the details of the new €11.5bn austerity package as Fotis Kouvelis, the leader of the junior coalition partner Democratic Left party, opposed to plans to revive a so-called labour reserve scheme to reduce the public sector wage bill, reports Kathimerini. Kathimerini Kathimerini 2 EUobserver Irish Times Irish Independent Welt Süddeutsche Handelsblatt FTDWSJ El País El Mundo Expansión Repubblica La Stampa Le Monde Les Echos Monti forced to apologise after Berlusconi’s party threatens to withdraw support to his government In an interview with the WSJ from last month, but published online yesterday, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said that, if Silvio Berlusconi were still in power, “Italy's spreads would now be at 1,200 or something.” He was forced to apologise, after several members of Berlusconi’s party threatened that the party could withdraw its support for Monti’s government at any time. Meanwhile, the lower house of the Italian parliament yesterday gave the final approval to a new package of €26bn public spending cuts to be implemented by the end of 2014. WSJ WSJ 2 EUobserver Repubblica Il Sole 24 Ore Repubblica 2 Corriere della Sera Irish Independent La Stampa La Stampa 2 FT Reuters According to a source quoted by AFP, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy “is under big pressure from all sides” to ask the eurozone’s temporary bailout fund, the EFSF, to start buying Spanish bonds, but will not do so “until he is given guarantees that nobody will demand new conditions in return.” AFP Cinco Días DWN The Central Bank of France has estimated that the country’s economy is expected to shrink by 0.1% in the third quarter of 2012. La Tribune Le Monde Le Figaro Citing research by Goldman Sachs, the Times reports that the EU’s single market for financial services is fragmenting as regulators put pressure on banks to retreat behind their national borders amid mounting fears of a euro break-up, resulting in a huge decline in flows of credit from Northern Europe to the South. Times An EU Commission report into municipal waste management has ranked the southern and newer member states as the worst at implementing EU legislation with large amounts of waste still sent to landfill, with resulting detrimental effects on human health and the environment, as well as costing member states €72bn a year. EUobserver