European Union banks should reduce the stock of bad loans to a maximum of 5 percent of the loans they hold, Germany and France said in a joint document, recommending a ceiling that would force Italy and other EU countries to hasten offloading plans, Reuters reported. The document, adopted before an EU summit scheduled for next week in Brussels, said that all European banks should aim at reducing their gross exposure to non-performing loans (NPLs) to a maximum ratio of 5 percent.

Altice Europe is selling its French and Portuguese tower businesses for a total of €2.5bn in cash, the telecoms and cable group said on Wednesday after market close, the Financial Times reported. The deal marks the latest asset disposal by Patrick Drahi’s Altice as the company moves to free up its balance sheet and reassure investors concerned about its debt pile and operational difficulties in its largest market of France. Earlier this month Altice spun off its US division from the European business as part of a restructuring that was announced in January.

Leaders of the world’s top central banks warned Wednesday that escalating trade conflicts could ricochet through financial markets and hurt the world economy, potentially prolonging the era of ultralow interest rates, The Wall Street Journal reported. Rising tensions over trade come at an awkward time for major central banks, which have started moving away from easy-money policies introduced since the global financial crisis.

As Greece prepares to emerge from one of the region’s most wrenching economic periods, its creditors are drawing up plans to ensure it is never a problem for the rest of Europe again, the International New York Times reported. European Union officials will unveil a blueprint in Brussels on Thursday to help the beleaguered country stand on its own once it comes off its third financial bailout in August. They have heralded Greece’s revival, and pointed to the closing of its bailout as a symbolic end to a ruinous financial crisis.

The Italian economy has significant problems — notably feeble productivity growth and a competitiveness handicap, particularly vis a vis Germany. These, writes Martin Wolf in his latest column, are domestic shortcomings, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. However, Martin argues that Italy’s membership of the eurozone makes them common concerns. What can be done? In the absence of sustained fiscal transfers between member states of the eurozone, the burden of adjustment will fall on Italy itself.

Non-performing loans held by Portuguese banks are declining at a substantial rate as the economy expands but remain “very high” by European standards, Moody’s said on Wednesday. The rating agency said the ratio of NPLs to gross lending fell to 15.2 per cent at the end of 2017, down from 19.5 per cent a year earlier, the Financial Times reported. The ratio had peaked at 20.1 per cent in 2016 in the wake of the eurozone debt crisis, which forced Portugal to seek an international bailout.

The European Central Bank edged closer to gaining power over financial clearing, a lucrative business dominated by London and a flash point in the Brexit negotiations, Bloomberg News reported. Lawmakers on a European Parliament committee on Tuesday endorsed a bill that amends the ECB’s governing statute, explicitly granting it authority over clearinghouses for euro-denominated contracts. This matters to the U.K. because the vast majority of interest-rate swaps in euros are cleared at a London unit of the London Stock Exchange Group Plc.

Central Bank governor Philip Lane said on Tuesday that he expected property prices in Ireland to “cool off” over time as supply increased, although he pointed to the continuing “strong fundamentals” of the market here, the Irish Times reported. Irish house prices have risen by 76 per cent from the post-crash trough, with Dublin residential property prices up 90.1 per cent from their February 2012 lows, while a recent survey from Knight Frank placed Ireland as the fourth fastest growing property market in the world.

The European Central Bank could ditch a plan to impose new rules on all euro zone banks under its watch to reduce their bad loans, and could instead move toward a “case-by-case approach”, the head of its supervisory body said on Tuesday. Plans by the ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) to force banks to set aside cash within a given timeframe against the large pile of soured credit they hold has met resistance from bankers, lawmakers and even within the central bank, Reuters reported.

Europe has finally emerged from its debt crisis with healthy economic growth, but it can’t shake one relic of its troubled times: negative interest rates. The policy was tried by Sweden briefly in 2009 and 2010 but eventually was implemented by Denmark, the eurozone, Switzerland and Sweden again over the subsequent five years before landing in Japan two years ago, The Wall Street Journal reported.