Christine Lagarde

Today, the European Union countries are deciding who will be Christine Lagarde's European successor candidate as the next managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

The governments of the European Union, which had given themselves time until the end of July to choose their candidate for the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have not yet agreed on the name of Christine Lagarde's successor, the French finance ministry reported.

Kristalina Georgieva receives France's support in determining the next candidate for managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Bloomberg reported.

Christine Lagarde resigned as director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The decision will enter into force on September 12. This is said in a statement by Lagard, distributed by the financial institution.

As the International Monetary Fund prepares to choose a new managing director to replace Christine Lagarde, who is to leave the post in the coming months, CNBC has reported that former Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos is among the candidates in the running for the job.

The Bulgarian candidature for eurozone membership will be discussed at a meeting of Eurogroup finance ministers. The point has entered the last minute on the agenda. It is envisaged that ministers will discuss Bulgaria's progress in relation to its desire to join the ERM II.

Then, in November, Christine Lagarde is set to succeed Mario Draghi as president of the European Central Bank.

The good news is that each of these candidates would strengthen the EU at a time of global insecurity. The bad news is that the EU itself will continue to face significant challenges from within.

For the first time in many years there are no clouds on the horizon for the Greek economy and its prospects are viewed as especially positive.

The climate on the Athens Stock exchange is positive as the general index soared to 900 points for the first time since SYRIZA took office in January, 2015.

The strong rally recorded by Greek bonds in the last few weeks continued on Wednesday with the yield of the benchmark 10-year paper dropping to a new historic low, just above 2 percentage points. This was thanks to the push from the candidacy of Christine Lagarde for the chair of the European Central Bank, which led many sovereign bond yields in the eurozone to record lows.

Politicians from Balkan EU member states failed to obtain any top posts in the new Commission after hopes rose that Sergey Stanishev of Bulgaria, for example, might become the new president of the European Parliament.