Euro continues declines on Greece concerns

The euro continued its downward trajectory in early Wednesday trading as fears persisted about Greek defaulting on its debts.

Mayors across the country have hit out at a government decree forcing them to cede control of their budgets to the state as it struggles to pay its bills.

Greece is under pressure to demonstrate to its fellow eurozone members and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that it is capable of carrying out the necessary reforms to unlock a further €7.2 million in bailout funding.

This has had a knock-on effect on the value of the euro, which dropped to $1.0726 and 128.36 yen from $1.0735 in Asian trading on Wednesday, and 128.42 yen in New York at the end of Tuesday.

In February, Greece pledged to its European counterparts that it would reach an agreement with creditors on the reforms required to access additional financial support, but with that date looming it looks increasingly unlikely that this will happen.

A plan was initially due to be presented at a meeting on finance ministers in Riga on Friday, helping the country to avoid defaulting on loan payments in mid-May.

However, the package will not be ready by the end of this week - or possibly even by the end of April - as recent weeks have seen Greece fail to provide access to key financial data or clearly detail the reforms it is planning.

In a bid to defuse the mounting tension, an EU official on Tuesday attempted to play down the focus on looming deadlines. "The use of deadlines, which leads to certain brinkmanship and unnecessary excitement, will not be done again," he explained.

The official went on to stress that while there were still "disagreements" in the negotiations - which have been ongoing between Greece, the EU and the IMF since last Saturday - there has been no "huge ideological fight", indicating that all parties are keen to reach consensus.