The progress of Greece’s fiscal adjustment programme and the deadlines for completing the first review dominated the meeting which took place between Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos and his Italian counterpart Pier Carlo Padoan in Rome on Friday.

According to finance ministry sources, the meeting was conducted in a good climate while the talks also focused on Greece’s debt issue, migration and its fiscal repercussions, unemployment and pension reforms.

The two ministers committed to holding a discussion on the short-term and medium-term course of the monetary union, irrespective of the individual problems of the EU member states, while they both agreed that austerity cannot be the future of Europe.