Euro zone manufacturing activity remained strong last month but was curtailed by supply chain bottlenecks and logistical problems which sent input costs soaring, a survey showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Ongoing disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, alongside a shortage of heavy goods vehicle drivers, has caused product shortages and left factories struggling to get the raw materials they need.

U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has given a personal guarantee that, short of a crisis, debt will shrink as a share of the economy from 2024 onwards, Bloomberg News reported. In his budget last week, the finance minister set a rolling three-year target to bring down the pandemic-bloated debt burden. But he has faced criticism that the rule would never bite because it moved forward every year.

The U.K labor market may be “alarmingly tight” and could stoke wage pressures, Office for Budget Responsibility member Charlie Bean told lawmakers, Bloomberg News reported. In testimony to the House of Commons Treasury Committee, Bean said the Bank of England would have little choice but to raise interest rates if the end of the furlough scheme does not bring more workers into the jobs market. Bean is a former deputy governor and chief economist of the U.K. central bank. The BOE will release its verdict on the labor market on Thursday, when it announces its interest-rate decision.

A troubling post-Brexit fishing spat between Britain and France showed few signs of abating Monday, a day before a threatened French blockade of British boats and trucks, the Associated Press reported. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss warned France that the U.K. will “not roll over” in the face of what she termed “unreasonable” threats from Paris. French fishing crews stood their ground, demanding a political solution to a local dispute that has become the latest battleground between Britain and the European Union.

The Irish commercial property market has been “phenomenally busy” in the past two months, with the ability of investors and occupiers to travel to undertake property inspections having had a “transformative effect” on it, according to a new report, the Irish Times reported. Commercial property specialist CBRE today published their final bimonthly report for 2021 on Monday, which provides an overview of trends and transactions in all sectors of Ireland’s commercial property market as the year begins to draw to a close.

As world leaders gather for a United Nations conference in Glasgow to tackle the threat of climate change, attention is pivoting to one of the biggest risks involved in decarbonizing the planet: ensuring that the costs of the green transition don’t set off a populist backlash, the New York Times reported. The worries are especially acute in Europe, where policymakers are expressing growing alarm over the possibility of social unrest and a weakening of public support if the burden of shifting from cheap fossil fuels falls too heavily on poor and middle-income households.

England and Wales have seen a surge in company directors winding up businesses that are unable to pay their debts, taking so-called voluntary liquidations to their highest level since 2009 in the depths of the global financial crisis, Reuters reported. Total company insolvencies in England and Wales jumped in the three months to the end of September to their highest since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic at 3,765, up 43% on a year earlier, government data showed on Friday.

The European Parliament launched a lawsuit against the bloc's executive on Friday for failing to apply a new law that allows the freezing of EU payments to countries which do not respect rule-of-law principles, Reuters reported. Poland and Hungary are both under formal EU investigation for not respecting the rule of law and stand to lose tens of billions of euros if the law is successfully applied to them.

The U.K. Insolvency Service says that creditors of Pazhar Zvezdy Ltd, previously known as ASA UK Development Limited, may not be aware that the company is now in compulsory liquidation, the Construction Index reported. Pazhar Zvezdy Ltd traded as a residential and commercial construction company. Following complaints it was investigated by the Insolvency Service. It was finally wound up in the public interest in the High Court on 7th September 2021 and the official receiver, Catherine Hudson, was appointed as the liquidator.

A U.K. energy supplier to tens of thousands of small businesses is on the brink of becoming the 14th provider to collapse in the last three months, further underlining the scale of the crisis gripping the sector, Sky News reported. CNG Energy's retail arm - which only supplies commercial customers - is close to falling into the Supplier of Last Resort (SOLR) system operated by Ofgem, the industry regulator.