European Central Bank

After two decades of relentless critique and predictions of doom, the single currency has already outlived many of its harshest critics' predictions when it was born in 1999.

Alternate Finance Minister Giorgos Houliarakis on Tuesday played down a report saying that Greece risks missing a first tranche of European Central Bank profit returns on Greek bond holdings due to delays in reforms, noting that those delays have already been brought to the authorities' attention and are to be made public in a European Commission report on Wednesday.

Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) officials are increasing pressure on local banks to expand their auctions of debtors' properties to include main residences valued at less than 100,000 euros.

Complexity and parallel planning are some of the problems encountered in using European funds, which should be better targeted, European Court of Auditors (ECA) President Klaus-Heiner Lehne told AGERPRES in an interview.

The Bank of Greece's plan for the reduction of nonperforming loans through the utilization of the deferred tax assets received provisionally positive feedback from Greek bank managers on Thursday.

The German government intends to support Athens's demand not to implement planned cuts to Greek pensions issued before May 2016, thereby backing Alexis Tsipras's administration ahead of national elections in Greece, according to sources cited by Bloomberg on Tuesday.

The Bank of Greece has a plan for helping the country's banks slash their pile of nonperforming loans by as much as half, according to a report by Bloomberg on Tuesday.

The European Central Bank will undertake a comprehensive assessment of six Bulgarian banks by next July, it said on Monday, part of Sofia's effort to join the banking union before adapting the euro currency, reports Reuters. 

Emergency central bank funding to Greek banks remained unchanged in October compared to the previous month, Bank of Greece data showed on Monday.

Emergency funding, which is more costly than borrowing from the European Central Bank, remained unchanged to 3.57 billion euros from 3.58 in the end of September, the data showed.

The European Central Bank lowered the ceiling on emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) Greek banks draw from the domestic central bank by 100 million euros to 4.9 billion euros ($5.60 billion), the Bank of Greece said on Thursday.