A Spanish court accepted Spanish fishing company Pescanova's insolvency petition on Thursday and said it would name independent administrators to replace the board of directors, Reuters reported. "We declare Pescanova in insolvency," the Pontevedra mercantile court in northwestern Galicia said in a ruling published on Thursday. Galicia-based Pescanova, which catches, processes and packages fish, filed for insolvency this month on 1.5 billion euros ($2 billion) of debt and has yet to present audited 2012 accounts, missing a March 1 deadline.

Britain avoided slipping into its third recession in recent times during the first quarter of 2013, a rare bit of welcome economic news for the government, but it continues to struggle to deliver even modest sustainable growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K. government took a bold gamble on a program of government-spending cuts when it took office in 2010, but it has faced increasing criticism of its austerity program as the economy has stagnated.

Four years ago, Iceland's electorate—seeking a harbor from financial turmoil—voted in a government that said entry to the European Union and euro zone would offer protection from currency volatility, punishing inflation and the embarrassment of a failed economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. As the tiny Nordic nation prepares to hit the polls Saturday, the EU dream is wilting. Strong tourism and fishing, widening trade relationships and the fact that the crisis that brought down three Icelandic banks is getting cleaned up has fueled skepticism about the idea.

Portugal's government plans to lower company tax rates "significantly" as part of a wider plan of incentives to drag the economy out of its worst recession since the 1970s, economy minister Alvaro Santos Pereira said, the Irish Times reported. He also promised to step up the financing of the economy by state-owned bank CGD that will provide €1 billion euros this year and €2.5 billion in 2014, and later to create a development bank to boost such funding further, especially for exports-oriented small and medium-sized companies.

A recent court decision blocking cuts in wages and pensions for public employees in Portugal is forcing the government of one of Europe's most fragile economies to move beyond palliative measures and try to overhaul the underlying structure of an inefficient public sector, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The businessman who took legal action in an attempt to halt the State’s decision to pay promissory notes to the banks has said he will challenge the plans to ‘name and shame’ individuals under new insolvency legislation, the Irish Times reported. David Hall of the Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation said he had “hundreds” of clients, many of whom would be prepared to challenge the proposed publication of their names on any of the four planned registers.

Britain finds out on Thursday if its stagnant economy has slipped back into recession, a week after the International Monetary Fund urged Chancellor George Osborne to consider scaling back his austerity programme. Economists estimate that Britain's $2.4 trillion (1.5 trillion pounds) economy eked out growth of 0.1 percent in the first three months to March, according to a Reuters poll. That would avoid a second quarter of contraction - the definition of a recession - after it shrank by 0.3 percent in the last three months of 2012.

Defying the conservative central government in Madrid, Andalusia this month implemented measures that will temporarily stop evictions and penalize banks and real-estate firms for holding hundreds of thousands of vacant properties, The Wall Street Journal reported. It favors people hurt by Spain's recession over of the interests of the country's lenders, including many that have received government bailouts, The Wall Street Journal reported. Whether the action will stand up in court is still in question.

Portugal unveiled an ambitious stimulus program on Tuesday to resuscitate its economy despite new concerns about some public companies that could hit the government's budget plans, The Wall Street Journal reported. Economy Minister Álvaro Santos Pereira said the government will aim to cut the corporate tax rate, provide incentives for foreign companies to move to Portugal, tackle a highly bureaucratic system that hurts investments and offer financing for small- and medium-size enterprises at attractive terms. Mr.

Private-sector activity in the euro zone declined again in April, a development likely to add to calls for a shift away from austerity and toward policies that stimulate growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. According to a survey of purchasing managers, business activity in Germany fell for the first time since November. Similar surveys recorded slowdowns in the growth of Chinese and U.S. manufacturing activity, leading to concerns that the global economy may be faltering.