LONDON (AFP) – European main stock markets dropped at the start of trading on Monday, as traders this week gear up for crucial events this week in the Greek debt crisis and await key economic indicators from around the world.Public and private creditors of Greece were meeting in Rome and press reports said French banks would propose arrangements to alleviate the Greek repayment schedule for up to 30 years to give Greece time to grow and have the means to service debt.
London's FTSE 100 index slipped 0.29 percent to 5,681.04 points, Frankfurt's DAX 30 lost 0.28 percent to 7,101.15 points and in Paris the CAC 40 shed 0.24 percent to 3,775.75.
Indebted Greece faces a strike this week and a momentous battle in parliament as the government struggles to quash dissent to additional austerity reforms needed to secure a vital new EU-IMF bailout.
The country's influential unions have called a 48-hour walkout from Tuesday on top of rolling power cuts by disgruntled electricity workers that have hit households around the country for the past week.
Greece has been told by its European partners that it cannot hope to continue receiving aid out of a 110-billion-euro rescue package agreed with the EU and the IMF last year without these reforms and privatisations.
The Socialist government of Prime Minister George Papandreou has until Thursday to push austerity reforms worth an additional 28 billion euros through a divided parliament -- on top of sweeping cuts last year.
On Monday, Tokyo's Nikkei-225 index closed down 1.04 percent to 9,578.31 points as investors shunned risks amid concerns over eurozone financial stability and ahead of key economic data in Japan and the United States, traders said.
Investors looked ahead to US data, including personal income and consumption numbers due later Monday, as well as the Bank of Japan (BoJ) quarterly "tankan" business sentiment survey on Friday.
On Friday, Italian bank stocks fell suddenly on warnings of a possible downgrade by ratings agency Moody's and yields on Italian government bonds surged, sparking fear that the eurozone's debt troubles could be spreading.
A day later, central bank governors agreed on ways to help reduce the "moral hazard" of leading banks whose failure would bring chaos to world finance.
The measures relating to so-called global systematically important banks were designed to strengthen their resilience and included raising their loss absorbency requirements.