Will EU leaders make strides towards recovery?(Photo AP)

Welcome back to the FT’s rolling coverage of the eurozone crisis. By John Aglionby and Tom Burgis in London and Anjli Raval in New York, with contributions from correspondents around the world. All times are GMT.

Today’s main event is the European Union leaders’ summit in Brussels, where growth and Greece’s debt are expected to top the agenda. We expect more movement towards a fiscal discipline pact, too.

Also today Portuguese bond yields have soared, an Italian bond sale went satisfactorily and widening eurozone spreads over German debt suggest unease is setting in anew.

00.22 Talks ground to a halt in Brussels as European leaders left for the night without reaching an agreement on how to plug Greece’s widening budget deficit. While the bargaining with Greece over a debt writedown and its economic management will continue for yet another day, we are going to close down the blog for the evening. Here is our updated EU summit story on today’s agreed fiscal discipline treaty.

A year ago, Barack Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address contained a laboured gag about salmon being regulated by a different US government agency when they were in the sea to when they swam into fresh water. This bureaucratic horror story was related to plug the idea of reorganising the agencies that regulate and promote trade. When that proposal finally saw the light of day this month, it managed a rare bipartisan achievement of uniting Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill in opposition.

Today, 85 separate business organisations also say it’s a bad idea. An appropriately sceptical take on the seriousness of the proposal is here. Thus it seems safe to file this one under “political posturing” unless something changes drastically.

Apart from
anything else, it’s hardly surprising that a fish which, unusually, divides its time between river and deep sea is going to pose a minor bureaucratic obstacle. Don’t most countries deal with marine and inland fisheries separately? The salmon is a fine creature, but re-engineering the US government around its inconvenient migratory habits seems to be overdoing it a bit.

In his second video on the US 2012 presidential election campaign, FT columnist Edward Luce considers whether anything or anyone can stop Mitt Romney from winning the Republican party presidential nomination after his wins in Iowa and New Hampshire.