The Telegraph liveblog highlights - economic data , Hollande inauguration and set up for his first meeting with Merkel - around the horn in europe today !

11.50 Greece has confirmed it will repay the full €450m bond which matures today (see 08.35 post), after it failed to reach any deal on a reduction with investors who held out against the debt restructuring which went on earlier this year.

A government source told AFP the repayment was intended to avoid any dispute, at a time when Greece is still trying to form a government after voters widely reject the harsh austerity terms of the EU-IMF debt deal in an election 9 days ago.

Private creditors in effect lost 70pc of their investment in a debt writedown agreed earlier this year as part of Greece's bailout agreement with the IMF and EU. Nearly 97pc of the total debt was eventually covered, leaving some €6.5bn outstanding, including the €450m bond which matured today.

11.15 Henry Samuel, our man in Paris, has been listening to new French president François Hollande, who has mentioned his plan to agree a new fiscal pact among eurozone countries, overthrowing the one agreed earlier this year.

The president said:

Today many peoples, starting with those in Europe, are awaiting and watching us. To overcome the crisis hitting it, Europe needs projects, it needs solidarity, it needs growth.

To our partners I will propose a new pact that will combine the necessary reduction of public debt with indispensible stimulation of the economy.Henry Samuel in Paris has more on the key first Merkel-Hollande meeting:

Mr Hollande's aides insist the inauguration will be a “sobre” ceremony with little of the pomp and family glitz so prevalent at Mr Sarkozy’s inauguration five years ago.

But the victory lap ends there, as he must immediately leave for a bruising clash with Ms Merkel over crisis in the eurozone this evening – a showdown which, as his campaign manager, Pierre Moscovici put it, could set his presidency on a trajectory of “success or failure”.

Mr Hollande has championed the idea of renegotiating the fiscal pact that enshrines budgetary discipline in the eurozone to include a growth chapter. Mrs Merkel insists the pact, signed by 25 of the 27 EU countries and already ratified in some, must stay as it is.

The Chancellor has promised to welcome him with “open arms” and that the visit was just a "getting-to-know-you" gathering, but Benoît Hamon, the Socialist Party spokesman set the stage for a clash by saying on Sunday: “We didn't vote for an EU president called Mrs Merkel who makes sovereign decisions for the rest of us.”