Mark McCafferty - standing firm over Europe © Getty Images

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Premiership Rugby's major shareholders are set to meet this week following latest developments in the row over next season's European competitions with little sign the English clubs are prepared to soften their position.

Mark McCafferty, Premiership Rugby's chief executive, has maintained that English teams will not play in European competition next season despite the announcement by the French clubs they would remain in the Heineken Cup after rather than the proposed Rugby Champions Cup which they had helped to draw up plans for.

Call for McCafferty to quit

• Former RFU chairman Martyn Thomas has said it is time for Premiership Rugby's chief executive Mark McCafferty to stand down.
  
  "The practical reality is that McCafferty has led the Premiership into the wilderness," Thomas told the Rugby Paper. "Now he's either got to lead them back from the wilderness, or they've got to find someone else to do it."
  
  Click here for the full story

Premiership Rugby has consistently said its clubs will not participate in ERC-run tournaments, with a two-year notice period to quit ERC being completed next June. Not playing in Europe next season is now a serious possibility, although Press Association reported detailed discussions on all aspects of the European debate will feature on this week's agenda.

"That's the most likely outcome," McCafferty told the Sunday Telegraph when asked if English clubs would not play in Europe next season. "It's the clubs' call on that, but from my perspective I can't see at the moment how it would be feasible for us to be in 2014-15 European competitions, if the unions, as they have said, are going to run a 20-team competition through ERC.

"We knew the French union was putting the French clubs under a lot of pressure. Those clubs are on a very tight timetable with regards to the signing of their new agreement with the French union and for their own domestic TV rights deal. But we were not pleased with the way it came out all of a sudden.

"I think the French clubs will say they won't play and the French union will tell six of them they have to play in this 20-team competition."

McCafferty dismissed suggestions that smaller clubs were the ones who would lose out.

"People forget that in 2014-15 we have got an increase factored in on our BT monies for the coverage of the Aviva Premiership," he said. "The new Aviva contract kicks in at that point. We have a fourth international next year. The financial issues are manageable."