The EU leaders’ meeting last week ended with a warning to Greece that it will have to stick to its bailout terms if it wants tostay in the eurozone, but fell short of resolving the Franco-German differences over the issue of eurobonds.

The message to Greece was that the EU wants Greece to remain in the euro area while respecting its commitments.

Athens has been asked to pursue tough economic reforms and carry out severe budget cuts in return for the bailout it was granted in March.

However, if the anti-austerity parties prevail in the election to be held on June 17, the deal is likely to be broken and a Greek exit from the euro would become a near-certainty.

In the meantime, according to the Office for National Statistics, consumer prices in the UK rose 3% from a year earlier, falling from 3.5% in March. The median forecast of a Bloomberg News survey was 3.1%.

The rate is within the government’s inflation target for the first time since February 2010, thus exempting Bank of England governor Mervyn King from the task of writing a letter to the government explaining the overshoot in inflation.

The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee recently halted quantitative easing, that is, bond buying by the central bank to stimulate the economy, even in the face of a worsening debt crisis in Europe and the UK slipping into its first double-dip recession since 1975.

Finally, in the US, figures released by the National Association of Realtors showed that sales of existing homes rose in April by 3.4% to a 4.62 million annual rate. These were underpinned by broad-based gains in demand that signal the real estate market is stabilising. The median price jumped by the most in six years.

Employment gains, depressed prices and record-low mortgage rates may bring more properties within the reach of many Americans, while home buyers are snapping up distressed houses.

This article was compiled by Bank of Valletta for general information purposes only.