Eurogroup expected to determine return of bailout monitors to Athens

Eurozone finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday were expected to decide on a date for the return of representatives of Greece's international creditors to Athens.

"This scenario is the likeliest," a European official told Kathimerini following a weekend of diplomacy between Athens and Brussels.

By agreeing to the return of bailout monitors to Athens, the Greek government will effectively be accepting creditors' demand for the approval in Parliament of a new raft of conditional austerity measures that would come into effect at the end of the program if Greece misses budget targets.

Technical staff, particularly from the International Monetary Fund, are expected to focus on an analysis of the budget figures for 2016. They will want to determine whether the better-than-expected performance of the Greek economy is attributable to one-off measures taken by the...