This WEEK in the European Union

BRUSSELS - Greece tops the EU agenda again this week, as eurozone ministers are expected to give a green light to a long-delayed bail-out needed for the country to avoid bankruptcy.

Eurozone finance ministers are meeting on Monday at 3.30PM in Brussels to seal a deal on a €130bn bail-out for Greece. This will allow Athens to launch a bond swap programme with private investors who will accept losses of 70 percent on their old Greek bonds - ideally to the tune of another €100bn.

Weeks of delays - partly due to rebels within the Greek government and partly to Germany, the Netherlands and Finland wanting to put extra pressure on Athens - have pushed Greece to the edge of the abyss, raising the spectrum of its euro-exit.

The eurozone ministers will update their non-euro colleagues about Greece on Tuesday morning, after which they will discuss two pieces of legislation aimed at reinforcing budgetary surveillance even further and implementing some of the provisions of the inter-governmental treaty on fiscal discipline.

Ministers will also discuss macro-economic warnings issued last week by the EU commission to 12 countries, including Italy, Spain and the UK.

Fresh data on the state of the EU economy will be assessed on Thursday when the EU commission publishes gross domestic product and inflation figures for 2012 across the 27 member states.

Research ministers meeting in Brussels on Tuesday will have a debate on the future of EU research funding in 2014-2020, including monies allocated to the bloc's space programme amid budgetary cuts.

MEPs are having a quiet 'constituencies' week while the head of the EU Parliament, Martin Schulz, will travel to Italy on Thursday for meetings with the country's leaders and parliamentarians.