BRUSSELS/ATHENS, April 15 (Reuters) – Greece received a
clean bill of health from its international creditors on Monday,
securing more rescue aid and prompting its finance minister to
say he would ask for much more debt relief if Athens keeps
meeting its bailout targets.

Athens is on course to contain its debt and pull itself out
of a crippling recession next year, the creditors said, adding
that the next disbursement of aid to the country, of at least
2.8 billion euros ($3.7 billion), should be approved soon.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Tax dodging causes the European Union to lose around 1 trillion euros of income each year, the president of the European Council said on Friday as he announced that EU leaders would discuss the issue at a summit next month.

This haemorrhage of tax revenues is equivalent to the entire annual economic output of Spain, and far exceeds a total of about 400 billion euros committed to bailouts of euro zone members Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus in coming years.

BRUSSELS, April 12 (Reuters) – Tax evasion is causing lost
income of around one trillion euros a year in the European
Union, the president of the European Council said on Friday, and
EU leaders will discuss how to combat the issue at a summit next
month.

“We must seize the increased political momentum to address
this critical problem,” Herman Van Rompuy, who chairs meetings
of EU leaders, said in a statement broadcast on the Internet.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A rescue program agreed for Cyprus will serve as a model for dealing with future euro zone banking crises and other countries will have to restructure their banking sectors, the head of the region’s finance ministers said.

The approach would mark a radical departure for euro zone policy after three years of crisis in which taxpayers across the region have effectively been on the hook for resolving problem banks and indebted governments via multiple rescue programs.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A rescue programme agreed for Cyprus on Monday represents a new template for resolving euro zone banking problems and other countries may have to restructure their banking sectors, the head of the region’s finance ministers said.

“What we’ve done last night is what I call pushing back the risks,” Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers, told Reuters and the Financial Times hours after the Cyprus deal was struck.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A rescue program agreed for Cyprus on Monday represents a new template for resolving euro zone banking problems and other countries may have to restructure their banking sectors, the head of the region’s finance ministers said.

“What we’ve done last night is what I call pushing back the risks,” Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers, told Reuters and the Financial Times hours after the Cyprus deal was struck.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – On a hot morning in July last year, Cypriot President Demetris Christofias sat with a group of journalists on the stage of the sleekly modern National Theatre in Nicosia and beamed as he talked about his warm ties with Russia.

The communist party leader, who met his wife and earned his doctorate in Moscow, told the Brussels-based reporters that Cyprus could easily overcome its financial troubles with help from both Russia and the European Union.

BRUSSELS, March 21 (Reuters) – If Cyprus cannot agree on a
levy on deposits it faces having its biggest banks wound down,
which would wipe out uninsured depositors, or could be forced to
leave the euro zone, a senior European Union official said on
Thursday.

“At the end of the day it is their own choice,” said the
official, who has direct knowledge of the negotiations between
the euro zone, the International Monetary Fund and Cyprus.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Central Bank President Mario Draghi gave EU leaders a crash course in macroeconomics late on Thursday, emphasizing his concerns about low productivity and high labor costs hurting the euro zone’s prospects, officials said.

In a two-hour session with the euro zone’s 17 heads of state and government, Draghi, a former professor of economics and political science, took his audience through a range of slides and charts depicting the region’s divergences.

BRUSSELS, March 15 (Reuters) – EU officials worked on a
rescue package for Cyprus on Friday, hoping to get approval from
the IMF and euro zone finance ministers later in the day.

Senior sources involved in the negotiations said the package
is expected to contain a mixture of tax increases, one-off
revenue raising measures, plans for privatisations and the
overhaul of Cyprus’s banking sector to ensure that funding for
the bailout is sustainable.