Why should the head of the IMF attend but not the president of Ecofin?
European finance ministers (ECOFIN) have been examining the effects of the island's Zero-Ten tax regime.
So far Euro-11 has operated as an informal ante-chamber to Ecofin, meeting beforehand and lacking its power to legislate.
EU. His notorious indifference when attending Ecofin meetings as chancellor has been compounded by his failure so far to visit Brussels as prime minister.
The Ecofin meeting of the 27 finance ministers is, at times, essentially limited to rubber-stamping agreements reached in the smaller eurozone conference that takes place a day earlier.
Investors will be keeping an eye on the Ecofin meeting of the Euro-finance ministers who are expected to discuss proposals for the single bank supervisor for their member states.
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So hard that - as the European Commissioner Olli Rehn confirmed this morning - there is now little chance of them reaching an agreement before next week's Ecofin meeting.
Britain, Sweden and Denmark, who have not joined the Euro, insist on major economic decisions being made by the 15-strong Ecofin which includes the finance ministers of all 15 member states.
According to a Treasury source, there has been a "big row" on the European finance ministers committee, Ecofin, about this, with Mr Osborne and the Swedish finance minister pitched against their German and French counterparts.
There will be a euro-zone summit in March, but it will not for the time being be institutionalised, unlike the euro group of 17 finance ministers who meet (and pre-cook most decisions) a day before Ecofin gatherings of 27.
The government was angered by the last-minute cancellation of Monday's meeting of ECOFIN - the EU's finance ministers - and are insisting that, in future, meetings of the 27 must not be set aside for meetings of the 17.
Agreement over the tax had already been reached before the meeting, and the nod from a majority of the Ecofin group of EU finance ministers - a requirement of the enhanced co-operation procedure - was merely a procedural matter, according to the Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan.
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