Luxembourg’s Prime Minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the group of euro-area finance ministers, is due to visit Athens tomorrow to meet Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, where he is expected to request a two-year extension to the country’s fiscal-adjustment program.

Germany’s director at the European Central Bank, Jörg Asmussen is also backing bank president Mario Draghi’s bond rescue plan involving large scale purchases of Spanish and Italian debt to prevent the disintegration of the euro.

The French Cac was up 0.77% to 3,508 in early trading, the EuroStoxx 50 climbed 0.86%, while the German Dax was up 0.69% to 7,082.

Asmussen confirmed purchases may be “unlimited” in scale and brushed aside warnings from the German Bundesbank that large scale buying would amount to debt monetisation and a fiscal rescue in breach of EU treaty law, reports the Telegraph. 

French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel meet in Berlin later this week.

However Moody’s said while it sees an improvement in the region’s peripheral countries due to the implementation of reforms, a full resolution to the crisis “may still take years”. 

The ratings agency expects all of the peripheral countries to register a contraction this year with Spain (contraction of 1.5%-2%) suffering the least and Greece (contraction of 7%-8%) being in the worst shape.

In the UK, the FTSE 100 opened up 0.6% higher at 5,859 after Wall Street ended the session flat.

In Asia, the Chinese central bank decided to provide the country’s banks with liquidity. 

The People’s Bank of China announced plans to bolster the country’s banking system with 220bn yuan ($34.6bn) last night through reverse-repurchase operations in an effort to boost growth.