Britain should respect post-Brexit trade rules or else face consequences, a German official said on Thursday as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was "crazy" to have checks on goods heading from Britain only to Northern Ireland, Reuters reported. Tensions over the Northern Ireland protocol, signed as part of Britain's exit from the European Union, flared again after Belfast ordered an immediate halt on Wednesday on checks on agri-foods, earning a rebuke from Brussels.

Greece plans to repay more than 7 billion euros in loans from the International Monetary Fund and eurozone partners in the next two months, paying down the rest of the IMF funds it borrowed to prevent bankruptcy during the financial crisis, two officials said, Bloomberg News reported. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters on Thursday the Treasury would repay 1.8 billion euros ($2.03 billion) in IMF loans ahead of schedule, the last batch of a total 28 billion euros the lender provided in two bailouts between 2010 and 2014.

The Czech central bank raised borrowing costs to the highest level in the European Union, delivering what’s probably its last large increase and outlining a relatively dovish outlook for the rest of the year. The koruna weakened. Policy makers raised the benchmark rate to 4.5% from 3.75% on Thursday, as predicted by a majority of economists in a Bloomberg survey. The move brought the cumulative rate hikes made since June to 4.25 percentage points, the boldest policy moves since the country began targeting inflation in 1998.

Inflation fed by high oil and gas prices hit record levels in Europe for the third month in a row, extending pain for consumers and sharpening questions about future moves by the European Central Bank, the Associated Press reported. The 19 countries that use the euro currency saw consumer prices increase by an annual 5.1% in January, the European Union statistics agency Eurostat reported Wednesday. The figure broke records of 5% in December and 4.9% in November and was the highest since recordkeeping started in 1997.

Northern Ireland's Agriculture Minister on Wednesday ordered a halt from midnight to all post-Brexit checks on goods coming into the region from the rest of the United Kingdom, a move Dublin and some of his partners in government said was unlawful, Reuters reported. Edwin Poots, a member of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which opposes the Northern Ireland protocol mandating such checks, cited legal advice that the measures should not have been introduced without approval from the regional government.

Britons will learn the scale of the financial pain they face on Thursday when the energy regulator Ofgem announces an increase to its price cap, with under-pressure households expected to see bills soaring by about 50%, Reuters reported. Ofgem will announce the new cap at 1100 GMT - an hour before the Bank of England is expected to hike interest rates again to tame surging inflation.

Euro zone unemployment fell to its lowest level on record in December, data showed on Tuesday, testament to the strength of the economic recovery and the effectiveness of part-time work schemes used to preserve jobs during pandemic lockdowns, Reuters reported. The European Union's statistics office Eurostat said the unemployment rate in the 19 countries sharing the euro fell to 7.0% of the workforce from a revised 7.1% in November -- the lowest rate on record since measurements started in April 1998. Economist polled by Reuters had expected a 7.1% jobless rate.

A group of U.K. manufacturers said its energy bills are set to soar this year, warning of potential closures, curbs in production and higher costs for consumers, Bloomberg News reported. Net Zero North West -- a consortium of industrial firms in northwest England -- said in a statement that four of its members are facing a collective bill of as much as 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) this year, about 65% higher than in 2020.

Euro zone manufacturing activity accelerated last month as supply chain bottlenecks eased, although the improvement was not evenly spread across member countries and factories still faced high inflationary pressures, a survey showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. IHS Markit's final manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) rose to a five-month high of 58.7 in January from December's 58.0, below an initial "flash" estimate of 59.0 but comfortably above the 50 mark separating growth from contraction.

German annual inflation slowed in January but was still higher than expected by analysts and well above the European Central Bank's price stability target of 2% for the euro zone as a whole, preliminary data showed on Monday, Reuters reported. Consumer prices, harmonised to make them comparable with inflation data from other European Union countries (HICP), rose 5.1% year on year compared with 5.7% in December, the Federal Statistics Office said. The national consumer price index (CPI) rose by 4.9% on an annual basis, easing from 5.3% in December.