Irish public finances fell deeper into the red last month as spending on various pandemic-related supports rose and tax receipts fell, the Irish Times reported. The latest exchequer returns, published by the Department of Finance, show the Government’s budget deficit - on a rolling 12-month basis – swelled to just over €14 billion in February. This was fuelled by a combination of falling tax revenues and increased spending on financial supports for impacted workers and businesses.

Poland’s government received an EU slapdown over its radical judicial reforms after the bloc’s highest court ruled Tuesday that changes to the way Polish Supreme Court judges are appointed may infringe EU law, Politico reported. The judgment comes amid growing concern about the independence of Poland’s judiciary, and forms part of a years-long legal and political conflict between Brussels and Warsaw over worries that the nationalist government is backsliding on the EU’s democratic standards.

Brussels and Washington, D.C., imposed new sanctions against senior Russian officials on Tuesday, delivering a one-two punch at the Kremlin over the poisoning attack and jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Politico reported.

Interest rates have been negative in Europe for years. But it took the flood of savings unleashed in the pandemic for banks finally to charge depositors in earnest, the Wall Street Journal reported. Germany’s biggest lenders, Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank A , have told new customers since last year to pay a 0.5% annual rate to keep large sums of money with them. The banks say that they can no longer absorb the negative interest rates the European Central Bank charges them. The more customer deposits banks have, the more they have to park with the central bank.

British consumer borrowing fell at its fastest pace in January since May last year as the country went back into a coronavirus lockdown, Bank of England data showed on Monday, Reuters reported. Unsecured lending to consumers fell by 2.4 billion pounds ($3.35 billion), the biggest fall since last May’s 4.6 billion-pound drop and more than a median forecast for a 1.9 billion-pound fall in a Reuters poll of economists. That took the year-on-year fall to 8.9%, the biggest decline since monthly records began in 1994, the BoE said.

A rush to quickly spend a €5 billion European Union fund aimed to counteract the economic impact of Brexit may sacrifice quality for speed, and Ireland could end up having to pay some money back, the European Court of Auditors has warned, the Irish Times reported. Ireland is in line to receive at least €1 billion of the Brexit Adjustment Reserve (BAR), by far the largest amount going to any country in the bloc due to the economy’s exposure to the impact of Britain’s exit from the EU.

The European Union will propose issuing a certificate called a Digital Green Pass that would let people who have been vaccinated against the coronavirus travel more freely, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said on Monday, the New York Times reported. “The Digital Green Pass should facilitate Europeans’ lives,” Ms. von der Leyen wrote on Twitter.

The European Central Bank “can and must react against” any unwarranted rise in bond yields that threaten to undermine the euro-area economy, policy maker Francois Villeroy de Galhau said, Bloomberg News reported. The comments by the Bank of France governor, among the strongest yet by ECB officials, encouraged investors to bet that the central bank is already stepping up its own emergency bond-buying program. While fresh data on Monday showed net purchases slowing last week, it said the figures were distorted by redemptions.

The Insolvency Service paid out £453.4 million in missing wages and benefits to workers at firms that went bust last year, according to new data, the East Ethan Courier reported. The payments made by the agency, which is part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), were at the highest levels in a decade although the various company lifelines provided by the Chancellor meant the number of firms going insolvent fell.