Italy is pushing for new rules to monitor economic reforms across the eurozone, in an attempt to reassure other European countries of its commitment to tackling its biggest structural problems and rally them towards greater flexibility on budgetary policy. Pier Carlo Padoan, Italy’s finance minister, told the Financial Times that “benchmarks” to measure and compare structural reforms would be both “disciplining” and “confidence building”. “This would be extremely useful for Europe and for Italy,” Mr Padoan said.

Hungary’s central bank is ready to use part of the country’s foreign-currency reserves to help the government rid households of their costly foreign-currency mortgages, a top central bank official said over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal Emerging Europe Real Time blog reported. While ensuring that the reduction in the country’s foreign-currency reserves were gradual, the central bank would provide the foreign currency to retail banks so they could convert foreign-currency mortgages into the local currency, said Adam Balog, a deputy governor at the National Bank of Hungary.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras announced tax reductions on Saturday in a bid to appeal to Greeks weary of four years of austerity that have cut living standards and to gain political capital as the opposition pushes for early general elections, the International New York Times reported. Speaking in the northern port of Thessaloniki at an annual trade fair where Greek prime ministers traditionally set out their economic policy for the coming year, Mr. Samaras announced a 30 percent cut to a tax on heating oil.

An Italian court has upheld a ruling by a U.S. court for Italy's Parmalat to pay Citibank $431 million in damages in a case relating to the dairy group's bankruptcy more than 10 years ago, lawyers for the U.S. bank said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Parmalat collapsed in 2003 after the discovery of a 14 billion euro ($18 billion) hole in its accounts. At the time it was Europe's biggest bankruptcy and its demise wiped out the savings of more than 100,000 small investors.

Mario Draghi on Thursday finally unveiled the European Central Bank’s plan to revive the eurozone’s dormant securitisation market, which the central bank hopes can help to turn around the region’s economic fortunes, the Financial Times reported. The ECB will start to buy packages of sliced and diced loans, known as asset-backed securities (ABS), in big quantities from next month.

A Swiss financial regulator said on Wednesday that it had initiated enforcement proceedings against a Swiss bank with ties to the Espírito Santo family’s troubled group of companies, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, or Finma, said it was investigating the role of Banque Privée Espírito Santo in the distribution of securities and financial products of one of the family companies.

Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said his government’s campaign to sell stakes in Irish banks to the euro-area bailout fund is less of a priority now that the holdings are worth more, Bloomberg News reported. A deal with the European Stability Mechanism “is not as attractive a deal any more because our bank shares have become very valuable,” Noonan said in an RTE Radio interview today. A gradual sale of shares in 99.8 percent state-owned Allied Irish Banks “over time to the market” is probably a better way to lower state debt, Noonan said.

The European Central Bank’s landmark review of euro zone banks will have to ask lenders to raise an additional €51 billion to be credible with markets, a Goldman Sachs survey of large institutional investors has found, the Irish Times reported. The survey of 125 institutional investors from across the world also found that nine of the 130 banks being tested were expected to fail, with capital shortfalls most likely at Italian, German and Greek banks, according to a document circulated by Goldman Sachs last night.

The number of buy-to-let mortgage accounts in arrears is continuing to increase despite rising rents in Dublin and elsewhere, the Irish Times reported. The latest figures from the Central Bank, however, show the number of homeowners in arrears has fallen again. Nonetheless, this improvement masked an increase in very long-term arrears, with the number of those behind in their repayments by two years or more continuing to rise. The figures for the second quarter of this year indicate mortgage arrears linked to investment properties remains a key problem for the banks.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan will hold a series of talks in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday about renegotiating bailout loans from the International Monetary Fund, Independent.ie reported. Mr Noonan has said taxpayers could save up to €375m per year if the State was able to pay-off a share of the IMF portion of the €67.5bn bailout. Any deal needs support from several quarters in Brussels but would give the Finance Minister plenty of scope to cut taxes in next month's Budget.