The successful completion in December of Novo Banco's restructuring means Portugal's fourth-largest lender will no longer request funds from the country's Resolution Fund or the state, the finance ministry said on Monday, Reuters reported. The European Commission had agreed that the process involving the bank that emerged from the ashes of the collapsed Banco Espirito Santo in 2014 was over, a ministry statement said.

The euro-zone economy will fare better this year than previously feared as a mild winter and high levels of gas storage help to ease the energy crisis, and the labor market holds up, according to the European Commission, Bloomberg News reported. European Union officials in Brussels raised their forecast for growth this year, predicting a 0.9% expansion in the currency bloc, and said it would narrowly avoid a recession. They also cut their projection for consumer price growth, though it remains high at 5.6%.

Swiss consumer prices rose by 3.3% in January - marking a year that inflation has remained above the Swiss National Bank's 0-2% target range, data showed on Monday, Reuters reported. The increase was more than expected, with economists forecasting the year-on-year rate to rise to 2.9%, up from the 2.8% rate seen in December. Prices were 0.6% higher month-on-month due to more expensive electricity and gas. Hotel accommodation also recorded a price increase, as did bread and coffee.

The German economy will grow slightly this year, the European Commission said Monday, revising upwards its forecast for Europe's biggest economy which it had previously expected to contract by 0.6%, Reuters reported. In its winter forecasts, the European Commision envisages 0.2% GDP growth for Europe's biggest economy in 2023, more than expected in autumn due to the easing of energy prices and policy support to households and firms. German gross domestic product decreased 0.2% quarter on quarter in adjusted terms in the fourth quarter.

Sweden will probably be the only economy in the European Union to contract this year as high inflation erodes private spending and a housing slump hits construction, European Commission said, Bloomberg News reported. The largest Nordic nation faces a 0.8% decline in its gross domestic product in 2023, followed by expansion of 1.2% next year, according to new projections by the Brussels-based executive of the trading bloc, published on Monday. While the commission had in November also forecast a contraction for Germany, it now sees the EU’s biggest economy growing 0.2% this year.

A Russian scheme to grant loan payment holidays to troops fighting in Ukraine, and for banks to write off the entire debt if they are killed or maimed, has added to growing pressure for the remaining overseas lenders in Russia to leave, Reuters reported. Almost a year since Moscow launched what it calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine, a handful of European banks, including Austria's Raiffeisen Bank International and Italy's UniCredit, are still making money in Russia.

Britain's economy showed zero growth in the final three months of 2022 - enough for it to avoid entering a recession for now - but faces tough prospects in 2023 as households continue to wrestle with double-digit inflation, Reuters reported. Monthly gross domestic product data for December - when there were widespread strikes in the public sector, rail and postal services - showed a 0.5% contraction, the Office for National Statistics said, larger than the 0.3% forecast.

The European Central Bank needs to keep raising rates beyond March and must hold them at high levels for a while even as inflation falls and this "sacrifice" becomes more difficult to explain to the public, the ECB’s newest policymaker said, Reuters reported. Having raised rates by 3 percentage points since July, policymakers have started to ponder when and where the fastest tightening cycle in ECB history will end, especially since inflation is now retreating quickly from record highs. But Croatian central bank Governor Boris Vujcic, whose nation joined the euro on Jan.

Moldova’s pro-Western government resigned amid the worsening economic fallout from the war in neighboring Ukraine, a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia was trying to destabilize the country, the Wall Street Journal reported. Announcing her decision Friday, Moldovan Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita told a news briefing in the capital Chisinau that no one could have predicted the scale of the challenges her government has faced since the Russian invasion began nearly a year ago.