Fairness. Everyone loves being fair, right? So who can resist a fairness tax? Not the Belgian government, The Wall Street Journal Brussels Beat blog reported. In late-night negotiations to trim billions off the country’s budget and meet European Union goals, the usual tweaks (more duty on cigarettes, some cuts to defense spending) were accompanied by this shiny new tax, presented by finance minister Koen Geens.

The insolvency of Alpine, Austria's second-biggest construction group, takes pressure off an overcrowded sector and could help profits at rivals, the former head of market leader Strabag SE told a newspaper, Reuters reported. "In Austria we certainly have an overstaffed market. If capacity is limited, that is certainly positive for the market," Hans Peter Haselsteiner, who is still a major shareholder in Strabag, told Die Presse in an interview printed on Tuesday.

Greece has three days to reassure its lenders it can deliver on conditions attached to its international bailout in order to receive the next tranche of aid, wire service Reuters is reporting. Athens and its creditors resumed talks on Monday, with a view to unlocking €8.1 billion in rescue loans, after a two-week break during which the government almost collapsed over redundancies at state broadcaster ERT.

Vítor Gaspar, Portugal’s finance minister and the chief strategist behind the country’s €78bn bailout programme, has resigned in a surprise move that highlights the unpopularity of the government’s tough austerity measures. Mr Gaspar, formerly a Brussels-based economist with no previous political experience, is to be replaced by Maria Luís Albuquerque, currently treasury secretary, the office of President Aníbal Cavaco Silva said on Monday, the Financial Times reported.

Unemployment in the euro zone continued its steady rise in May, according to data published Monday, underscoring the human effects of a downturn that has lasted a year and a half, the International Herald Tribune reported. The jobless rate in the 17 countries that belong to the euro zone was 12.1 percent in May, adjusting for seasonal effects, the report from Eurostat, the European Union statistics agency, said. That figure compared with 12 percent in April, which was revised down from 12.2 percent reported earlier. Based on the revised figures, May unemployment was a record high.

Britain's biggest coal producer, UK Coal, will be placed in administration and most of its mines and pension liabilities transferred to a state-run pensions agency in a bid to save 2,000 jobs, according to a union leader and a newspaper report. The British coal industry has struggled to break even in recent years because of rising costs, hefty pension liabilities and competition from cheap imports from Colombia and the United States, Reuters reported.

Spain's bank-bailout fund will try in the coming months to sell two loss-making lenders the government nationalized last year, a senior official at the fund said Monday, four months after a previous attempt to sell one of them failed, The Wall Street Journal reported. He said the bailout fund, known by its Spanish acronym FROB, will soon hire two investment banks to analyze the balance sheets of NCG Banco SA and Catalunya Banc SA and open discussions with would-be buyers.

Greece and its international lenders resume talks to unlock 8.1 billion euros (6.9 billion pounds) of rescue loans on Monday after a two-week break in which the government almost collapsed over bailout-related firings at state broadcaster ERT, Reuters reported. Greek officials including Prime Minister Antonis Samaras have said they expect the talks to conclude successfully, despite setbacks to the country's privatisation programme and delays in public sector reform. The stakes are high.

Spain's government raised its long-term economic growth projections slightly and said it would boost taxes and public spending next year, following a relaxation of deficit targets by the European Union, but signaled that recovery from the country's recession would be slow, The Wall Street Journal reported. Spanish officials said Friday they would raise the ceiling for 2014 public spending by 2.7%, to €133 billion euros ($173.41 billion).

Trade unions asked the Italian government this week to promote a production alliance between Italy's two largest steel producers, ILVA and Lucchini, to help the troubled firms stave off further declines, Reuters reported. The Italian steel sector, the second largest in Europe after Germany, has been hard hit by a drop in demand that has been exacerbated by tough austerity policies. Its output contracted by more than 11 percent in May from a year before. "Only by pushing forward production integration among the largest Italian steel players can we think of getting out of this tough situation.