Next Monday sees the new insolvency service open for business. The body has already had 4,500 inquiries and its boss, Lorcan O’Connor, expects thousands of people to avail of its services, the Irish Times reported in a commentary. Overborrowed and insolvent individuals will now have a couple of ways out of their problems other than fully fledged bankruptcy. The insolvency service is only part of the Government/troika strategy for dealing with overindebtedness.

France has stepped up its assault on tax havens by blacklisting Bermuda, British Virgin Islands and Jersey, in a sudden move set to impose heavy penalties on thousands of French individuals and businesses, the Financial Times reported. The three offshore centres have been added to a list of “non-co-operative jurisdictions”, triggering withholding taxes of up to 75 per cent on payments from France.

Permanent TSB bank, which is more than 99 per cent owned by the State, booked a €429 million impairment charge on its non-performing mortgage loans in the first half of this year, the Irish Times reported. This was €5 million less than in the same period of 2012 but highlights the scale of the challenge still facing the bank as it seeks to tackle its mortgage arrears. Of this figure, €236 million of the impairment related to home loans in the Republic and €102 million to buy-to-let investment properties.

Five years after a huge property crash devastated the Irish economy, prices are finally stabilising, but a booming urban market where supply is scarce and competition fierce is raising concerns about a new bubble in the capital, Reuters reported. House prices quadrupled on a decade of easy credit during the boom years that earned Ireland the sobriquet Celtic Tiger, then fell by more than half from 2007, leading the country into an EU/IMF bailout, a costly bank rescue and leaving almost one in five homeowners behind on their mortgage payments.

Bank of England Gov. Mark Carney, in his debut speech on Wednesday, announced new measures to boost lending in the U.K. and said the central bank is ready to step in with fresh stimulus if the country's economic recovery falters, The Wall Street Journal reported. Once again, however, his message seems to have fallen on deaf ears: U.K. government bonds fell and traders stuck to bets that the Bank of England won't be able to keep its pledge to hold interest rates at a historic low until 2016. Mr.

Portugal is clearly hitting its export stride, a step that economists view important not only in a Portuguese rebound but in the revival of other parts of Europe. Small businesses cannot on their own mend Portugal’s long-suffering economy. But as many of the country’s businesses have accepted that true growth must occur beyond the country’s borders, the economy is beginning to improve, the International Herald Tribune reported.

Last June, the European Commission announced its about-face on bank restructuring. The money for recapitalising distressed banks would now come primarily from creditors, not European taxpayers, with a pecking order to specify which lenders would be repaid first. All of this is welcome, at least in principle. In practice, however, the scheme leaves much to be desired, The Guardian reported in a commentary. The problem is that a very long list of exceptions reduces the recoverable assets to such an extent that in many cases it will still be impossible to make do without public money.

Euro zone officials are considering a big overhaul of Greece’s sputtering privatisation programme that would move most of the state-owned real estate intended for sale into a Luxembourg-based holding company managed by foreign experts, the Irish Times reported.

The French government has unveiled a much-anticipated reform of its deficit-hit pension system, raising the level and duration of contributions but avoiding some of the measures demanded by the EU and others seeking a more radical overhaul, the Financial Times reported. Anxious to avoid an outbreak of social conflict that accompanied previous reform efforts, the government stuck to a promise by President François Hollande not to raise the prevailing minimum retirement age of 62, as many other European countries have done, and as Brussels recommended.

The Dutch government reached a deal on an austerity package for 2014 in a bid to meet European Union budget requirements despite fierce resistance to more belt-tightening at home and concerns that it could further harm the already struggling economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The coalition government struck a deal on €6 billion ($8 billion) in tax increases and spending cuts, Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said Tuesday. "I'm satisfied that we have already reached a deal now," he said. Details will be given Sept.