Tax evasion lies at the heart of the Greek financial collapse, which has resulted in international bailout loans exceeding 205 billion euros, or $266 billion, the size of Greece’s depressed economy. In fact, Greece’s international creditors have made revamping its notoriously lax tax system a primary condition for any additional bailout financing, the International Herald Tribune reported.

Germany’s finance minister has warned that a single EU bailout agency and rescue fund for ailing banks is legally untenable until the bloc’s treaties have been overhauled, the Financial Times reported. In today’s Financial Times, Wolfgang Schäuble calls for a “two-step approach” that would leave bank rescues in the hands of “a network of” national authorities until treaty changes can take place.

Orpington Structured Finance I has gross assets of €1.7 billion, which would make it one of the most valuable firms in Ireland. Except it has no employees. It has no buildings or machinery. Nor does it pay any tax. It is one of hundreds of so-called financial-vehicle corporations, which are companies set up to house or trade in securitised investments, in other words to package and resell loans.

Professional debt negotiators will be allowed to set their own rates and charge upfront fees from struggling debtors going through the State's new insolvency process, The Independent reported. According to confidential draft regulations to be published later this month, personal insolvency practitioners (PIPs) can charge initial consultation or assessment fees and the actual rates will be left to the practitioners themselves. The Insolvency Service of Ireland says the rates will be dictated by the "market" and it won't be issuing guidelines on how much PIPs should charge.

Portugal's government said on Sunday its EU and IMF lenders had concluded work on the latest bailout review, indicating there were no outstanding obstacles for Lisbon to receive the next 2 billion euro tranche of the rescue package, Reuters reported. The review, which had been practically sealed in March, hit a snag early last month when the constitutional court threw out some of this year's austerity measures. But the government presented a plan to compensate for those, along with wider deficit reduction steps until 2015 worth 4.8 billion euros.

Slovenia pledged to sell 15 state firms and raise VAT on Thursday in a desperate bid to avoid an international bailout, but gave little detail and delayed the spending cuts investors say are needed to stabilise its finances, Reuters reported. The much-anticipated package offered no timeframe for the sell-off of state firms including the country's second largest bank, its biggest telecoms operator and the national airline. Nor did it say how much they were worth. It also said cuts to the public sector wage bill would have to await the outcome of negotiations with unions.

Extra efforts to engage with the unemployed to get them back to work are required, according to the EU/IMF troika after its latest visit to Ireland, the Irish Times reported. The troika also says that strict implementation of this year’s budget is essential to keep the country on track to exit the bailout. In a statement today on its tenth review of the implementation of the bailout programme the troika said significant progress had been made but remaining challenges required continuing policy efforts.

Bailed-out Portugal added to the unemployment woes of southern Europe on Thursday as the country's jobless rate hit a startling 18% of the working population, The Guardian reported. The first quarter figures from the national statistics institute revealed that youth unemployment had soared even higher, with 43% of the under 25s who are not studying now unable to find work. "It is a dramatic and brutal increase," said Helena Pinto, a deputy for the Left Bloc party, who also pointed to a leap in emigration by people desperate to find work.

Hungary should bring in personal insolvency legislation to help to deal with bad debts left over from the country's property boom, a senior official from Hungary's central bank said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. "For non-performing (loans) at the moment there is no efficient programme in place," Marton Nagy, managing director at the National Bank of Hungary, said at a business conference. He said there was no mechanism currently to deal with borrowers' entire debt.

Global youth unemployment is set to continue growing over the next five years, putting a generation at risk of lasting damage to their earnings potential and job prospects throughout their lives, the International Labour Organisation has warned, the Financial Times reported. The UN agency said in a report released on Wednesday that it expected the worldwide youth jobless rate to increase from 12.4 per cent last year to 12.8 per cent by 2018.