Wolfgang Schäuble

France's new President Emmanuel Macron secured backing on May 15 from key ally Chancellor Angela Merkel for his bid to shake up Europe, despite skepticism in Berlin over his proposed reforms.

Travelling to the German capital to meet the veteran leader in his first official trip abroad, Macron used the opportunity to call for a "historic reconstruction" of Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host Emmanuel Macron for talks in Berlin on Monday, a day after the new French president is due to take office, AFP reported.

The German leader had welcomed Macron's resounding election win on Sunday, saying he "carries the hopes of millions of French people and also many in Germany and across Europe".

The International Monetary Fund and eurozone government lenders need more time to reach an agreement on debt relief for Greece because the eurozone is still not sufficiently clear in its intentions, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said on Friday.

Structural reforms are key to membership of the euro area, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said while defending his 2015 offer of a Greek euro "timeout."

"If a country does not want to leave [the euro], then it has to make structural reforms - like Greece has," Schaeuble said in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica published Thursday.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told a German newspaper the European Union should take a tough stance in negotiations with Britain over its exit from the bloc after more than 40 years of membership, Reuters reported.

News of a parcel bomb going off at the International Monetary Fund's headquarters in Paris swept through the Greek media on Thursday afternoon as it came just a day after a similar device was posted from Greece to the German Finance Ministry.

Reuters reported that one person was "slightly injured" after opening the booby-trapped letter at the IMF's Paris office.

The leader of the opposition party New Democracy Kyriakos Mitsotakis, stated in an interview he gave to the ANT1 TV Channel that his party will not vote in favor of the new measures the government will bring to the Parliament, as these are the result of their mistakes.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble denied on Sunday that he had said Greece would have to leave the eurozone if it failed to implement economic reforms.

Schaeuble said in an ARD television interview that Greece would not have problems if it implemented agreed reforms, but would if it fails to carry these out.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble doesn't expect euro zone finance ministers to reach a final deal on Greece at their meeting today in Brussels, a spokesman said on Monday.

Euro zone finance ministers are meeting in the Belgian capital to assess Greece's progress in fulfilling the conditions of its bailout.

Hours before the EuroGroup meeting in Brussels, the leader of the German SPD party and former European Parliament Martin Schulz said anyone who turned Europe and Germany against each other were committing a sin against the future of the country. “It is not a wise thing to reiterate the discussion about Greece’s exit from the eurozone.