EU leaders promise further steps to quell crisis
monetary affairs, said "Cassandras" who had predicted disaster for the euro and a Greek exit had been proven wrong. But there is little time to relax. The next stages of banking union - creating a resolution fund for winding up troubled banks and coordinating deposit guarantees to protect savers - may be fought over even harder. And then there will be political and financial hurdles to negotiate through the year.
"The fact that the situation in the financial markets is now better than before should not be seen by the governments as a way to procrastinate," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters.
Much of southern Europe faces another year of grinding recession with record unemployment and deepening poverty that will tear at the fabric of wounded societies and may push governments' efforts to reduce deficits further off course. With Silvio Berlusconi vowing to contest an Italian election early next year, a full bailout of Spain still on the cards and a German election in September casting a long shadow, 2013 promises to be the EU's fourth turbulent year in a row, even without risks from bailout victims Greece, Ireland and Portugal. Italy is a particular concern if the next government rows back on any of the economic reforms put in place by technocrat Prime Minister Mario Monti, whose time in office has helped stabilise financial markets and stave off the crisis.
Several participants at a pre-summit meeting of centre-right leaders in Brussels urged Monti to stand as a
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