France and Germany are squabbling over who should foot the bill for Europe’s banking union, with Paris fearing its banks will pay the biggest share towards a €55bn rescue fund, the Financial Times reported. As the EU enters a potentially decisive week in talks on a central system for handling bank crises, France is fighting plans to make its sector of big universal banks the leading contributors to the common insurance plan.

Hungary’s top court Monday ruled that lawmakers can adopt legislation allowing retroactive changes to foreign-currency loan contracts, but the changes must take into account the interests of both the borrowers and lenders, The Wall Street Journal Emerging Europe Real Time blog reported. Foreign-currency loans–mainly mortgages tied to the Swiss franc–were hugely popular before the financial crisis because they were much cheaper to service than local-currency loans.

The Austria government wants to ensure taxpayers do not end up footing the entire bill for winding down state lender Hypo Alpe Adria and could use special legislation to go after some creditors, government ministers said on Sunday. Austria, which nationalised Hypo in 2009 to avoid a failure that would have sent shockwaves across the region, finally ruled out on Friday letting it go bust. Instead it will wind it down via an expensive "bad bank".

Serbia's likely new prime minister said he plans "several painful" steps to narrow the nation's budget deficit after his party won parliamentary elections on Sunday, an outcome he expects will accelerate Serbia's accession to the European Union, The Wall Street Journal reported. Aleksandar Vučić's center-right Serbian Progressive Party won 49% of votes at the general election Sunday and, under the country's rules, will get 155 seats in the 250-seat legislature. Since 2012, Mr. Vučić has been the first deputy prime minister in a coalition government. With an absolute majority, Mr.

Austria's finance minister Friday said debt-ridden bank Hypo-Alpe-Adria Bank AG will be wound down and not allowed to become insolvent, ending months of speculation on how to close the financial black hole, The Wall Street Journal reported. After years of repeated bailouts, a separate entity will be set up to wind the bank down, Michael Spindelegger said, with some creditors sharing the burden. "There were many reasons to seriously consider an insolvency, but in the end the risks weren't predictable," Mr. Spindelegger said.

The Chartered Accountants Regulatory Board has been asked to formally investigate the conduct of KPMG as auditors of Irish Nationwide Building Society, whose collapse cost the State €5.4 billion, the Irish Times reported. Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty has written to Carb to ask it to examine audit reports, prepared for the failed building society by KPMG in the financial years 2006 until 2009, under seven different headings.

A former Treasury official commissioned by the Co-op Group to examine how it incurred a £1.5bn financial black hole is being paid £2,000 a day by the debt-laden mutual, The Guardian reported. Sir Christopher Kelly was handed the lucrative deal by Euan Sutherland, the Co-op chief executive who walked out last week when his pay arrangements were leaked to this newspaper. Kelly was hired nine months ago to examine decisions made by the Co-op in the period leading to its discovery of a deep capital shortfall. He is expected to report in May.

The European Union published plans for tougher policing of securities used to pay banker bonuses in a bid to ensure that employees share the pain if a lenders’ performance dips, Bloomberg News reported. Proposals approved today by the European Commission would require debt used in employee bonus payments to convert into ordinary shares or be written down when a bank gets into difficulties. The measures also include safeguards to prevent bank staff from benefiting from better terms than other investors, the Brussels-based institution said in a statement.

The Hungarian central bank Thursday fined 35 banks in an effort it said was to protect consumers after most banks managed to pass on to clients a large share of the extra tax burden the Fidesz-party government levied on the banking sector in 2013, The Wall Street Journal Emerging Europe Real Time blog reported. The National Bank of Hungary imposed a total of 1.2 billion forints ($5.3 million) on the banks for unilaterally changing their services fees, which–the central bank claimed– increased costs for customers.

Applying English legal solutions to the debt problems of a continental European company became a regular feature of the financial crisis, the Financial Times reported in an analysis. Since 2009, lawyers have often opted to move a company’s “centre of main interest” (COMI) to England, enabling a scheme of arrangement to be applied. This allows a company to restructure its debt with only 75 per cent of each class of lender agreeing, carrying recalcitrant minority lenders along with the deal.