European leaders will this week try to rescue under-fire efforts to deliver new fiscal rules and cut Greece's debt burden as investors ignore Standard & Poor's euro-region downgrades.

Greek officials will reconvene with creditors on Jan. 18 after discussions stalled last week and governments elsewhere are preparing for a Jan. 30 summit as the European Central Bank warns against "watering down" a revamp of budget laws. With France's 10-year bond yield little changed today, investors will now focus on its sale of as much as 8.7 billion euros ($11 billion) at 3 p.m. in Paris.

The talks on Greece and budgets may serve as tougher tests of the tentative recovery in investor sentiment than S&P's decision to cut the ratings of nine euro-region nations, including France. History suggests fallout from the downgrades may be limited. JPMorgan Chase & Co. research shows that 10-year yields for the nine sovereigns that lost their AAA status between 1998 and last year's U.S. downgrade rose an average of two basis points the next week.