Mário Centeno

Jeroen Dijsselbloem said on Friday in an interview with the Financial Times that it was not mainly Germany that wanted to see Greece out of the eurozone in 2015.

The differences between the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund regarding the easing of the Greek debt have again been exposed in the last few days, while offering an outlook of what the next few months will be like in terms of negotiations.

The election of Portuguese Finance Minister Mario Centeno, a socialist, as Eurogroup president brought smiles to the faces of Greek government officials.That satisfaction was expressed by Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos, presumably on the grounds that here is a man who shares the same socialist ideals as SYRIZA, a man who is a citizen of a Southern European nation which has also gone t

The government on Monday sought to appear upbeat about the agreement it reached with the country's creditors over the weekend, and which was approved by eurozone finance ministers earlier in the day, but the atmosphere within leftist SYRIZA is tense as dozens of reforms must be legislated in the coming weeks, some of them contentious.

The finance ministers from the 19 countries that use the euro are deciding who should lead their regular meetings, with Portugal's Mario Centeno widely tipped to take the helm of a group that has led the currency bloc's crisis-fighting efforts.

Finance ministers from Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal and Slovakia bid on Thursday to replace Jeroen Dijsselbloem as the head of the eurozone finance ministers, the Eurogroup, before a vote next week among the 19 countries sharing the euro.

The European Union should discuss debt relief for Greece and potentially move ahead even without the International Monetary Fund, Portuguese Finance Minister Mario Centeno said in an interview published Tuesday by the Bild newspaper.

"We have to start this discussion," the German newspaper quoted Centeno as saying.

By Eurogroup Chief and Dutch PM Jeroen Dijsselbloem at the Eurogroup Press Conference on December 7

Good evening everyone and welcome to this press conference. I was going to say that we’ve had busier turnouts – looking at the audience tonight – but it makes sense, because we also had a short Eurogroup meeting.