Greece's new Prime Minister Antonis Samaras will miss this week's EU summit while he recovers from eye surgery, according to a government spokesman.

He underwent routine surgery on Saturday for a damaged retina, with the operation said to have been a success.

(Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron on Sunday proposed scrapping rent subsidies for Britons under 25, in a newspaper interview likely to strain his Conservative Party's coalition with the Liberal Democrats for the second time in a week.

Requiring almost 400,000 low-paid and unemployed young Britons to live with their parents if they cannot afford market rents could save just under 2 billion pounds ($3.1 billion) a year, Cameron said in an interview with the Mail on Sunday.

Asked about the proposal in a BBC interview, Lib Dem Deputy Finance Minister Danny Alexander said the coalition had already implemented major welfare reforms - including cuts to housing benefit - and that these should be allowed to bed down first.

Separately, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, leader of more than 80 million Anglicans worldwide and a long-standing critic, accused Cameron of "aspirational waffle designed to conceal a deeply damaging withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable".

Scottish MEP Alyn Smith has accused the EU of "bribing" farmers to quit the industry.

The SNP member was speaking after a parliamentary committee this week approved a report on reform of the EU's agricultural policy.

The report contains a proposal to pay up to €35,000 for farmers who are willing to leave the sector and "permanently transfer their holding to another farmer".

The measure is part of a wide ranging package of proposals aimed at boosting the competitiveness of the farming sector.

The report was approved by parliament's agricultural and rural development committee.

...for all the pre-implementation hype, the new democracy instrument has gotten off to a poor start.

Of the first six officially registered initiatives, not one has begun to collect signatures.

This poor state of affairs is due to the fact that the online signature collection system offered by the Commission is not yet up and running. This costs the ECI organisers valuable time.

In addition, officials at the EU's central information services are still unable to answer the simplest questions about the ECI process. There is not enough staff. And training on the ins and outs of the ECI - which must have at least one million signatures in a minimum of seven member states - is inadequate.

BRUSSELS - Turkey says future visa-free travel will work out well because Turks no longer want to live in the EU.

Its European affairs minister Egemen Bagis told EUobserver on Friday (22 June) that Turks these days travel to EU capitals "to spend [money]" in shops and hotels.

"In the past, when Turks were asked do you want to live in Europe, 80 percent would say Yes. Now, 85 percent say No. Turkish citizens feel there is more hope in Turkey, better job opportunities," he said.

He noted that in 2010, 27,000 Turks went to live in Germany, but 35,000 German citizens moved to Turkey.

As the queues of jobless Greeks grow, more and more young people are moving abroad. It's an exodus that's particularly painful for Greek journalist Giorgos Christides.

Hanging out with friends is becoming increasingly difficult for me.

It seems my friends are fleeing Greece one by one, and the next time we see each other for a beer, our meeting place will probably be London's Trafalgar rather than Thessaloniki's Aristotle Square.

These past couple of weeks, I saw two of my best friends become residents of London, leaving their spouses and children behind, to work in the British capital and escape the employment no-man's-land that Greece has turned into because of the crisis.

Recently I also had to bid farewell to my brother, who returned to Saudi Arabia where he works as an engineer. The trend is not limited to 30 and 40-something professionals, but is spreading to younger age groups as well.

According to the latest national polls, more than seven out of 10 young Greeks aged 18 to 24 believe that emigration is the ideal - indeed the only - way out from the crisis. Two out of 10 have already applied for jobs and university places abroad.

(Reuters) - European leaders will discuss specific steps towards a cross-border banking union, closer fiscal integration and the possibility of a debt redemption fund at a summit on June 28-29, according to a document prepared for the meeting.

Two officials familiar with the 10-15 page document, drawn up over the past month and which is still being revised ahead of the summit, said it sets out in detail the four "pillars" required for a strong economic and monetary union which leaders believe is necessary to secure the currency project's future.

As well as progress towards a banking union, the paper discusses the need for a more integrated budget policy, steps required for deeper economic integration, and how to retain "democratic legitimacy" if countries give up some sovereignty.

The document has been drafted by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi, and Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the Eurogroup countries using the euro.

In order to overcome the resistance of the federal states against the fiscal pact in Bundesrat, the second chamber, the coalition of Angela Merkel agreed to introduce bonds issued jointly by the federal and the state governments, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. The common issuance's goal is to reduce interest rates and thus the refinancing costs of the states.

Different notions of what federalism entails, apparently.

Come to think of it, I did cross paths with an impressive convoy of police vehicles on two occasions. Wondered what it was about.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

Reuters has details of the first draft of a paper to be discussed by the European Council on Thursday and Friday; no formal decisions are likely to be taken; paper targets four areas: banking union, fiscal union, economic union and political union; banking union is prioritised, and could be implemented within a year; paper says no treaty change would be necessary for any of the proposals; the article says it is unlikely that this set of proposals would calm tensions in the markets; a leaked paper from the German finance ministry said a euro breakdown would have catastrophic implications for Germany - exceeding the cost of even the most expensive rescue package; Wolfgang Schäuble says there may be a referendum in Germany on political union within five years; Jens Weidmann rejects Mario Monti's ESM bond purchase proposal as a hidden monetary financing; Greece's new coalition will ask for an extra two years to implement austerity, no more firing of civil servants and an extension of unemployment benefit to two years; health problems prevent Antonis Samaras and Greek finance minister  Vassilis Rapanos to attend the summit; a poll says that 39% of Germans now want to leave the euro; 78% want Greece out; Angela Merkel has bribed the federal states into accepting the fiscal pact with the promise of a jointly issued federal-state debt instrument to cut the financing costs for the Länder; federal government also agreed to pay any fines for the Länder until 2019; Spain's new toll road schemes face catastrophic losses as the economy goes  from boom to bust; the poll ratings of Francois Holland and his prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault is already falling; Simon Johnson says JP Morgan may not survive the collapse of the euro; George Soros says Germany is endangering financial stability in Europe, and has drawn up an action plan to set up and link a banking union and a fiscal union; Wolfgang Münchau, meanwhile, argues that Mario Monti should stand up to Angela Merkel and say that Italy cannot remain in the euro without joint debt instruments.

Greece's newly designated finance minister, Vassilis Rapanos, has quit less than a week after being appointed.

His resignation was confirmed by the office of new Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras.

No reason was given for the move. However, Mr Rapanos has been in hospital since last week receiving treatment for stomach pains.