Debt crisis: EC President warns more must be done 11.13 More German news: the country held a bond auction this morning, seeing-off €1.17bn in year-long debt at an interest rate of -0.0184pc. That means that investors were willing to pay Germany to look after their cash. Meanwhile, a German finance ministry spokesman has told Reuters that leveraging the ESM bail-out fund to €2 trillion is "not realistic," but that there is a possibility of private sector investors being brought in. 11.02 Time for a quick update on the European markets, which slipped in early trading and have moved further into the red after poor German business confidence figures out this morning. The FTSE 100 has lost 0.53pc, the CAC in Paris is down 1.12pc and Frankfurt's DAX is off by 0.61pc. 10.41 There was trouble in Portugal over the weekend, where the government is near to rolling-back on plans to increase social security contributions. Hundreds of thousands protested last week and on Saturday a presidential state council meeting was interrupted by further demonstrations. The government has now offered to renegotiate with unions. The photograph below shows protesters in front of presidential palace of Belem in Lisbon. 09.55 The EU can't afford to relax its economic reform programmes, says EC President Herman Van Rompuy in a video released via his website: Europe is on the way out of the crisis, but there is still work to do. I see a tendency of losing the sense of urgency both on short-term policies and on (the) longer term. This must not happen. As long as 25m people are looking for a job and as long as we have not fully stabilised the euro, we cannot sit back. 09.34 German business confidence has fallen for the fifth month in a row; fears over the financial crisis have pushed it to its lowest since February 2010. The Ifo economic institute's index dropped to 101.4 points in September from 102.3 points in August. President Hans-Werner Sinn said: The companies surveyed are again less satisfied with their current business situation. They also expressed greater pessimism about the future. The headwinds on the German economy continue to prevail.