Greece's era of austerity is over, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras claimed Friday, as he painted a positive picture of the reforms his government has agreed to take after the bailout program ends in 2018. Speaking in parliament, Tsipras described the deal reached Monday as an "exceptional success" and said it showed the country's creditors accepted Greece's insistence that it could no longer bear further budget austerity, the International New York Times reported on an Associated Press story.

This spring, France will vote in a presidential election that has raised questions over the country’s continued use of the euro, The Wall Street Journal reported. National Front candidate Marine Le Pen has said she would pull her country, one of the European Union’s founding nations, out of the common currency. That has sent yields on French bonds climbing to their highest level against German debt since 2012. It has also hit the bonds of weaker European economies as questions resurface over the euro project. But for now, the currency itself appears relatively unmoved by the threat.

Investors just can’t get enough of Germany’s short-dated debt. The yield on Germany’s two-year bond has fallen to another record negative low this morning as bondholders snap up German assets amid escalating fears about the EU’s political stability, the Financial Times reported. Dubbed one of the “most sought after assets in financial markets“, the price on Germany’s two-year “schatz” bond has been pushed to an all-time high this week, driving yields head-long towards the minus 1 per cent mark.

Europe’s growing political risks are reviving a moribund corner of the credit market. Trading in credit-default swaps tied to French, Italian and Dutch sovereign debt has surged this year as populist parties garner electoral support by bashing the euro and European Union, Bloomberg News reported. That’s stemmed a long-term slump in trading of contracts insuring European government debt that was spurred by tougher regulations in 2012.

Germany has posted its highest budget surplus since reunification in 1991, inviting fresh scrutiny over whether the eurozone’s largest economy should do more to increase spending and redress global economic imbalances, the Financial Times reported. Germany’s statistical office on Thursday reported the country was in the black by €23.7bn last year, with local, state and central government coffers benefiting from record-low unemployment and ultra-cheap debt finance stemming from the European Central Bank’s mass purchases of sovereign bonds.

A round of job cuts has been made at O2 to strengthen the British mobile network’s performance, as parent company Telefónica continues to weigh options for the business. About 5 per cent of the UK network’s 6,500 workforce left the company in the fourth quarter, triggering a restructuring charge of €38m, the Financial Times reported. O2’s operating income for the quarter rose 4 per cent to £324m, excluding the charge. The full-year figure was 1.7 per cent higher at £1.4bn.

IMF managing director Christine Lagarde signalled that Greek debt restructuring can wait and the country should focus on overhauling its economy for the duration of its latest bailout, which expires in 2018, the Irish Times reported on a Bloomberg News story. Speaking in a German television interview after meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Ms Lagarde said “the volume of restructuring will clearly depend on how much reform, how much progress, how strong the Greek economy is” when the aid programme ends.

If Marine Le Pen has her way, the French will soon pay for their baguettes with francs, not euros, The New Zealand Herald reported on an Associated Press story. The presidential candidate from the anti-EU, anti-immigration National Front party is all about national sovereignty and independence. She wants France to take control of its money, subject to a referendum that would lead France out of the European Union and its shared currency. But how would France pull off a euro exit, or "Frexit"? No country has left the euro since its creation in 1999.

Italian banks are stuck in what stressed-debt experts call purgatory, still forced to pay a heavy price for their past sins despite loan data that suggests they are turning a corner. The rate at which loans are souring hit an eight-year low last year, but banks still face some 8 billion euros (6.74 billion pounds) a year in fresh writedowns, based on past rates at which already-soured loans have gone into outright default, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

Brussels has warned Italy to cut its record public debt by April to avoid breaching EU budget rules, the Financial Times reported. The European Commission said on Wednesday that Italy’s debt represented “a major source of vulnerability” as it urged Rome to meet its commitments to adopt pension reforms and other “structural measures” worth 0.2 per cent of gross domestic product. Valdis Dombrovskis, vice-president of the commission in charge of eurozone issues, said “as of today there would be a case to open an excessive deficit procedure for Italy”.