Greek farmers, many on tractors, have once again been blockading roads and border posts amid mounting signs that the country long at the epicentre of Europe’s debt woes is – once again – teetering towards crisis. Protesting farmers have been a regular feature of the social unrest that has sporadically gripped Greece, the Irish Times reported. It is now more than seven years since the Greek financial crisis erupted and the debt drama has often had a déjà vu quality about it.

Premier Oil is preparing to seek finance for a $1.5bn development off the Falkland Islands, as the UK company refreshes its strategy after its long-awaited debt restructuring deal last week, the Financial Times reported. Tony Durrant, Premier chief executive, said calmer relations between the UK and Argentina had improved the outlook for investing in the Falklands, where Premier has an estimated 520m barrels of resources in a field called Sea Lion.

The economy of the 19 countries that use the euro got off to a strong start in 2017 even as inflation pressures continue to mount in the wake of the recent rise in oil prices, a closely watched survey showed Friday. Financial information company IHS Markit said its gauge of business activity across the manufacturing and services sectors held steady at a five-and-a-half-year high of 54.4 points in January, still way above the 50 threshold between expansion and contraction, The Washington Post reported. Encouragingly, the index’s gauge of job creation spiked to a near nine-year high.

A court in the Netherlands on Thursday decided that two subsidiaries of debt-laden Brazilian phone carrier Oi SA would not start bankruptcy proceedings, the company said in a securities filing. The filing confirmed a Reuters report that Oi Brasil Holdings Coöperatief UA and Portugal Telecom International Finance BV, would remain operating under "suspension of payments" legal status.

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi heaped praise on Germany on Thursday for demonstrating how countries can succeed within the currency union, and urged other eurozone governments to follow Berlin’s example, The Wall Street Journal reported. “When countries do pursue the right policies, the euro is no hindrance to success,” Mr. Draghi said Thursday at an event in Slovenia’s capital city, Ljubljana, to mark the 10th anniversary of that country’s adoption of the euro.

Europe’s biggest banks can be shut down in line with the bloc’s new bank failure rules without losses snowballing and causing wider mayhem, according to a European Central Bank study, Bloomberg News reported. Based on confidential bank-by-bank data, the study shows that resolving any one of the euro area’s 26 largest banks by applying the tools of the new European Union’s new rule set -- imposing losses on shareholders and creditors instead of resorting to state aid -- wouldn’t bring down another lender.

Economists this week have noted that European growth is getting back on track, but that “political risks” could derail that progress over the course of this year, The Wall Street Journal reported in a commentary. Think about that for a minute. The political risk is that voters could turn to fringe euroskeptic parties in the Netherlands, France, Italy and Germany. Voters don’t often oust their politicians when things are going well in an economy. So either the European Union’s economic performance is overstated, or the political threats it faces are.

Investors are dumping Greek bonds, fearing that Athens will be unable to pay debt that comes due this summer, The Wall Street Journal reported. The selloff comes as the Greek government is again at a standstill in negotiations with its creditors in the eurozone and at the International Monetary Fund. Athens needs to break the deadlock and secure more aid before about €6 billion ($6.5 billion) in debt has to be repaid in July.

The drop in French government bonds has accelerated this morning, pushing the premium investors demand to hold its bonds over Germany’s to the highest in three years, as the favourite for the country’s presidency is hit by a swirl of allegations over payments made to his family, the Financial Times reported.

Italian banks are speeding up the sale of distressed loans backed by real estate, in an effort to mend balance sheets weakened by enormous piles of debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. But the banks still have a long way to go. For many loans, they are assigning a higher value than what buyers are willing to pay, meaning that the process of unloading bad loans is likely to remain drawn out. Bolstering the outlook are signs that Italy is coming out of a property slump, which would make it easier to sell more distressed loans. Italy is lagging the U.S.