The Greek central bank has warned that the country's economy is on the brink of an "uncontrollable crisis" if a breakthrough is not made in the coming days to solve the current phase of its long-running financial problems.
Its bailout expires in 12 days, and Athens has warned that it cannot afford to make the €1.6bn repayment that it is due to make to the IMF at the end of the month.
Head of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem has told a Dutch parliamentary committee that the chance of significant progress being made today is "very small."
Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has clarified that the Greeks will not be putting forward any new proposals or concessions at the meeting, saying that it "is not the right place to present proposals which haven’t been discussed and negotiated on a lower level before" - lower level negotiations are currently frozen.
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The Federal Reserve is set to raise interest rates in September - the bank ended its two-day meeting with a statement saying that it believes that poor economic data recorded in the first quarter of 2015 was a transitory dip and that the economy will be strong enough to sustain one - or possibly two interest rate increases during the second half of this year.
Its outlook for 2015 has upgraded its GDP growth forecast from between 1.8 and 2 percent, to between 2.3 and 2.7 percent.
Janet Yellen, Fed chairwoman signalled that rate hikes could be on the way at her most recent press conference in March.
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EU Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Pierre Moscovici has said that he expects Ireland to engage constructively in efforts to introduce tax harmonisation across the Union.
Speaking as he launched Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) proposals in Brussels he said that he had discussed the issue with Michael Noonan when he visited Dublin in May.
While previous attempts to introduce similar policies in the past have been a "non-starter" in Ireland - he thinks that there will be "room for discussion on the two-step approach" which is currently being put forward.
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Europe’s five largest aviation groups are to form a trade body to lobby for change in public policy and regulation of the aviation sector.
The group will launch in October and to create a US-style lobbying platform to influence EU policy on issues such as taxation, ongoing efforts to create a single European sky, measures to curb the impact of strikes in the air traffic control sector and the rise of middle eastern based carriers.
Ryanair may well have stolen a march on its new allies in terms of lobbying. The airline is understood to have held a thirtieth birthday party bash in Brussels earlier this week which was attended by the new EU Transport Commissioner and other senior officials.
Meanwhile IAG’s formal offer document for Aer Lingus is now expected to issue tomorrow giving Ryanair a further twenty one days to make an initial response to the offer.
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The share price of computer and technology company, Oracle fell by about 7 percent in after hours trading in the US last night after it announced lower than expected fourth quarter revenues of $10.7bn and significantly lower than expected earnings per share of $0.78c.
The tech giant said the results were significantly impacted by the strengthening of the US dollar.
But the results were the sixth successive quarter of lower than expected earnings from Oracle, and a six percent reduction in software and cloud earnings has worried the market that its transition from a largely hardware manufacturer of computer technology, to software and enterprise solutions is taking much longer than expected. Oracle employs about 1,000 people in Ireland.
