Germany's biggest aluminium smelter plant, owned by Norway's Norsk Hydro, is facing immediate shutdown due to high environmental costs, a German daily said on Tuesday. The Rheinwerk plant in Neuss will have to close down immediately if the metal industries do not receive aid in the coming days, Die Welt newspaper cited Martin Kneer, managing director of the German Metal Federation WVM, as saying in an e-mail to the German Chancellor's Office. A spokesman for WVM told the newspaper other aluminium and zinc smelter plants are facing the same risk of being shut down.

The restructuring plan for General Motors Co.'s European operations is mostly in place, Nick Reilly, president of GM Europe, said on a conference call Saturday. There will be about 8,300 job cuts in Europe, Reilly said, confirming an estimate in a document seen by Dow Jones Newswires Friday. Reilly repeated his optimism that governments in the European countries affected by restructuring would come through with financial aid.

Fears that Greece faces imminent bankruptcy are unfounded but the country must take "harsh" measures to shore up its economy, Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker said on Sunday, Agence France-Presse reported. Greece's widening public deficit and a huge official debt has unsettled European market watchers, particularly regarding the standing of Greek government debt bonds. The concern intensified after the recent debt crisis in Dubai.

European airlines reacted sharply last night to moves in Brussels to force them to set up a compensation fund for passengers stranded by failed carriers. They said the move would be a costly response to an "infinitesimally small" problem, the Financial Times reported. Meglena Kuneva, the European Union's consumer commissioner, is today expected to call for the extension of rules on insolvency protection to cover holidays and airline tickets that people book for themselves on the internet.

European Union regulators will next week approve KBC's restructuring and allow it to remain in banking and insurance in Belgium and eastern Europe, two sources familiar with the situation said on Friday. The European Commission is scrutinising whether an injection of €7 billion ($10.5 billion) into Belgium's KBC by the Belgian and Flemish regional governments complied with EU state aid rules. "The Commission's decision on KBC's restructuring plan is due on Wednesday," one of the sources told Reuters. "The key message is that KBC has kept its bancassurance model.

The U.K. and Belgium on Monday demanded the European Commission scrutinize the sale of General Motors Co.'s European operations to a consortium led by car-parts maker Magna International Inc. to ensure that rules on government aid aren't breached, The Wall Street Journal reported. The governments of both nations fear that GM factories in their countries will bear the burden of job losses that the deal will bring. Magna confirmed Monday it plans to cut 10,500 jobs from GM Europe's work force of about 50,000.

The European Union wants to make limits on bankers' pay a key issue when leaders from the Group of 20 largest economies meet in Pittsburgh later this month, The Wall Street Journal reported. Several of the bloc's finance ministers, in Brussels for a special meeting to prepare a common negotiating stance for the G-20 summit, cited pay curbs as their main priority. "We have to stop the restarting of the bonus culture," Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg told journalists before the ministers' meeting.

The German government may be willing to finance a restructuring of Adam Opel GmbH to avoid an insolvency of the troubled General Motors Co. European unit, The Deal Pipeline reported. Berlin has not yet been asked but might be willing to finance a GM-led restructuring after general elections Sept. 27, Financial Times Deutschland wrote. Germany might also reportedly be willing to support a controversial offer for Opel from Brussels financial investor RHJ International SA if it promises to only hold the company temporarily or if it teams with a major auto manufacturer.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, says Belgian-French financial services group Dexia's restructuring plan could distort competition and does not guarantee recovery for the group, Reuters reported. The Commission said certain measures the group had proposed could distort competition, and questioned whether Dexia would be able to obtain sufficient long-term funding.

The European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch, said Thursday that it would release badly needed funds to Latvia to help the struggling Baltic nation head off a collapse of its economy and maintain its currency link to the euro, The New York Times reported. The commission said in Brussels that it would release €1.2 billion ($1.7 billion), the second installment of a 7.5 billion euro financing package that the country secured in December with the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and other international lenders.