The President of the Eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem says Greece is making good progress towards recovery and is "regaining competitiveness." The remarks came after a meeting with the finance ministers of the 17 EU countries.

He said, "The latest figures show an improvement of the general government's deficit; Greece is clearly regaining competitiveness and the current account deficit is narrowing rapidly. Also the stability of the banking sector is gradually improving. Greece also made good progress with the implementation of the prior actions required before the upcoming disbursement but some further work on a limited number of issues is needed to ensure full compliance."

The Eurogroup also approved the next round of Greece's 7.5 billion euro bailout loan. However, the second disbursement is conditional on the country making further headway on improving its tax collection, liberalizing closed professions and shrinking its public sector.

Meanwhile, the EU ministers did not release more aid for Portugal. They said they were still waiting for Lisbon's latest austerity measures to be cleared by the country's parliament. The ministers also took stock of the progress in Cyprus, which dominated the Eurozone's agenda earlier this year.

An agreement was reached with the island country on a 10 billion euro bailout in April. The bloc's permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, transferred an initial two billion euro tranche to Nicosia on Monday.

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