Belgium has sworn in a new government, ending a record-breaking 541 days of political deadlock.

New Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo was sworn in by King Albert II at the royal palace along with his 12 cabinet ministers and six secretaries of state.

Mr Di Rupo, a French-speaking Socialist, took the oath of office in French, Dutch and German - reflecting language sensitivities in the country.

The Europe crisis is thought to have spurred politicians to find a solution.

France and Germany have reaffirmed their commitment to reform the eurozone, after ratings agency Standard and Poor's put most of the zone on "credit watch" over debt crisis fears.

The two countries said proposals for a treaty change agreed on Monday would reinforce governance of the eurozone.

They said their priority was to press ahead with the proposals.

S&P's move means six countries with top AAA ratings would have a 50% chance of seeing their ratings downgraded.

The Government faced calls today  from both Tory and Labour MPs to reform Britain's secretive lobbying system in the wake of revelations in The Independent.

This morning we published details of how Bell Pottinger boasted about its access to the heart of Government to journalists posing as potential clients.

The revelations have increased pressure for the Government to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists.

Conservative backbencher Jesse Norman said that the latest disclosures reaffirmed his view that lobbying was a "canker on the body politic".

David Cameron warned tonight that he will block plans for a new EU Treaty unless European leaders agree to a list of British demands.

The Prime Minister insisted that if eurozone countries want to use the "institutions of Europe" to rescue the single currency, they will have to back a number of "British safeguards" in return.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel renewed calls for reform of the treaty after emergency talks in Paris yesterday.

The aim would be to allow far tougher rules and sanctions governing the eurozone in future to reassure markets about the euro's long-term stability.

So here is the euro plan. It's EFSF RIP.... Instead it's over to fast tracked ESM, European STability Mechanism in mid 2012...

2. Presuming Treaty changes get passed through by March 2012. Then the ESM will be allowed to act as a bank...

3. And if Treaty passed, the ECB will consider the fiscal compact met, and be willing to effectively leverage the ESM. Hey presto. Bazooka.

4. Problems: Ireland referendum, and I suppose Denmark. Brussels invoking various protocols and articles to get round need for referenda

5. The ESM vote in the Bundestag is going to be a helluva ride. That will be off the fence time for Germany. Could topple government.

Yes, as @MattTempest reminded me it's protocol 12 that Brussels is looking at. And, I'm told article 126 and article 136 of the Treaty

Demonstrators trying to hold a second day of protests against vote fraud in Russia's parliamentary elections have clashed with police in Moscow.

Hundreds of officers blocked off Triumphal Square, then began chasing about 100 demonstrators, seizing some and throwing them into police vehicles.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's United Russia party saw a significant drop in support in Sunday's election but it will still have a majority in parliament. Opponents say even that watered-down victory was due to massive vote fraud.

Britain faces years of public disorder fuelled by the economic crisis, with police battling to keep control of the streets, a former Scotland Yard chief has warned.

Lord Stevens made his warning at the launch of an independent commission into the future of policing, which has been set up by Labour as it tries to outflank the government on law and order.

Labour says the Tory-led government rebuffed its calls for a royal commission into policing, so it effectively set up its own.

Stevens, the last commissioner of the Metropolitan police to complete his term in office, warned the government not to be "insulting" or "arrogant" in dismissing the work of the panel of academics and former police chiefs that he will chair.

The European commission could be empowered to impose austerity measures on eurozone countries that are being bailed out, usurping the functions of government in countries such as Greece, Ireland, or Portugal.

Bailed-out countries could also be stripped of their voting rights in the European Union, under radical proposals that have been circulating at the highest level in Brussels before this week's crucial EU summit on the sovereign debt crisis.

A confidential paper for EU leaders by the EU council president, Herman Van Rompuy, who will chair the summit on Thursday and Friday, said eurobonds or the pooling of eurozone debt would be a powerful tool in resolving the crisis, despite fierce German resistance to the idea.

It called for "more intrusive control of national budgetary policies by the EU" and laid out various options for enforcing fiscal discipline supra-nationally.

The Government's promise to reverse the erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion has been "unfulfilled, if not abandoned altogether", experts say.

Despite the Government's initial commitments, in reality their changes "have resulted in the police having greater, often summary and arbitrary powers over the individual and less accountability for their actions", the criminal justice experts warned.

And bringing in directly elected police and crime commissioners (PCCs) to replace police authorities from next year could lead to a "passing of the buck" between the commissioners and chief constables when concerns arise, they added.

Writing in Criminal Justice Matters, guest editors professors Lee Bridges and Ed Cape said: "It's as if the Government's commitment to 'fundamental human freedoms' is one that implies its own freedom from due process and the rule of law."

Eurozone officials are currently discussing plans to double the firepower of the rescue umbrella by allowing the EFSF and ESM to run concurrently; Herman van Rompuy wants to restrain the treaty amendments to a simple change in the Protocol 12 on excessive deficits; he hopes that this would allow a fast-track procedure that would not require a convention or national ratification processes; but the strategy raises complex legal issues, and it seems that only a small subset of Angela Merkel's and Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal can be squeezed into such a procedure; Britain asks for an end to QMV on financial services as a quid-pro-quo for its acceptance of a treaty change, but the German government may not accept this deal; S&P has now threatened to downgrade the EFSF, after attaching a negative outlook to the six AAA-rated eurozone members, as well as the rest of the eurozone; Norbert Gaillard believes that the S&P downgrade threat will ultimately make Germany more co-operative; Fabrizio Saccomani hints at ECB action to counter the liquidity crisis;he also says that credit conditions in Italy might deteriorate, but this would stop short of a credit crunch; the Greek parliament approves the 2012 budget; Francois Fillon rules out yet another austerity plan;FT Deutschland says that Jens Weidmann is going to play a critical role in the next few days in shaping the ECB's response to the crisis; the SPD party congress settles for a moderate set of policies, but raises doubts about Peer Steinbrück's chances to become Merkel's challenger; Bild provides a comprehensive list of anti-German outbursts in the European media; Martin Wolf, meanwhile, says a fiscal package cannot solve a current account crisis.