EU Council

Greece's left-wing prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, on Wednesday called for an emergency summit of EU leaders this month if no agreement is reached on the country's bailout progress at Friday's Eurogroup meeting in Malta.

Greece and its international lenders are close to concluding a long-stalled bailout review, EU Council President Donald Tusk said on Wednesday.

"We are close to concluding this demanding procedure," said Tusk after meeting Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens. "We have to be contained on optimism but I feel more optimistic."

A tete-a-tete between EU Council President Donald Tusk and Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov in Skopje ended without a breakthrough after Tusk failed to persuade Ivanov to award a mandate for the formation of a new government to the opposition Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev.

Zaev and his coalition allies have mustered a majority in Macedonia's parliament.

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May formally began Britain's divorce from the European Union on March 29, saying there was "no turning back" from a decision pitching her country into the unknown and triggering years of fraught negotiations.

Ongoing tension between Ankara and Brussels could further complicate the launch of technical negotiations to upgrade a customs union agreement to the advantage of both sides, Turkish and European diplomats have admitted, revealing that a Turkey-EU summit at the leaders' level planned for May or June will not happen until the end of the year. 
 

Greece will support a declaration marking the European Union's 60th birthday but needs the bloc's backing against International Monetary Fund demands on labor reforms, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said ahead of a Summit in Rome on March 24.

The expenditures for the preparation of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union will exceed the limit of BGN 50 M allocated for this year and the amount will be altered, announced Yana Doncheva, director of the National Centre for Preparation of the Presidency of the EU Council.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said late on Monday that the European Union will have problems if do not allow individual members to participate in various degrees of integration with each other.

Merkel made the comment in Paris after a meeting with the leaders of the four largest economies in the Eurozone - Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

The leaders of Italy, Germany, France and Spain met in France to discuss the future of the European Union. After the meeting the four leaders came out with a common agenda and the same ideas about the future of the EU.

PM Aleksandar Vucic says he is convinced that Serbia will remain firmly on the European path when he "leaves the government in a month, two, or three."