In the week that Germany and France were officially declared to have emerged from recession there was little movement on sovereign bond markets, as the focus remained on Ireland, Britain, Spain, and Greece.

The four were among the gang of five, including France, that were singled out for special attention by the European Commission for breaching Europe's excessive deficit procedures.

In Ireland's case, the government secured a year's extension to slash the budget deficit back below the ceiling of 3% of GDP from about 12% currently.

If Ireland was reprimanded by the EC last week, then Greece received the severest of warnings.

The new Greek government elected a few weeks ago had already announced it had found a huge hole in the budget sums. It was forced to revise this year's budget shortfall to a level only slightly higher than our own.

That had already infuriated the people who lend to Athens .

The EC last week did not hold back either: "For Greece, the commission considers that no effective action has been taken as the strong deterioration in the budgetary position in 2009 (-12.7% versus the -3.7% committed by the previous government) is mostly the result on an insufficient response by the Greek authorities. On the expenditure side, the 2009 budget execution points to sizeable expenditure overruns in 2009," Brussels thundered.

The challenges facing Athens, Dublin and London remain remarkably the same.