France has received five offers for the takeover of its troubled Petroplus refinery, two of them "serious," as a deadline passed on Tuesday for potential bidders to submit offers to legal administrators and avoid a liquidation the government hopes to avoid, Reuters reported. Late on Tuesday, French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg described as "serious" the offers received by Switzerland's investor group Terrae and Egypt's energy company Arabiyya Lel Istithmaraat.

Poland’s government drew a line in the sand ahead of the upcoming European Union’s summit, saying proposed 30 billion euros ($39.9 billion) of additional budget cuts were “inconceivable,” The Wall Street Journal Emerging Europe blog reported. EU leaders will Feb. 7-8 meet to try to agree on the size and structure of the bloc’s budget for 2014-2020 after the failure of their previous attempt in November over the €30 billion of more cuts proposed by Germany.

Already living in Germany's shadow, the French economy is increasingly losing ground to southern Europe and Spain in particular, despite efforts by President Francois Hollande to claw back France's competitive edge, Reuters reported in an analysis. Though Hollande has reforms in the works to trim France's high labour costs and introduce more flexibility into the jobs market, the moves stop far short of what Spain has done.

PSA Peugeot Citroen won staff agreement on Tuesday for an early wind-down of its doomed Aulnay plant, as rival French carmaker Renault pressed unions to sign a new national labor deal, Reuters reported. The moves by both French automakers, designed to address a crisis of overcapacity and falling sales, have divided unions and sparked protests and stoppages at sites around the country.

British banks that fail to shield their day-to-day banking from risky investment activities could be broken up, Chancellor George Osborne said on Monday, bowing to political pressure to come down harder on reckless lenders, Reuters reported. European countries are retooling their financial systems to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crash, trying to strike a balance between popular calls for banks to be reined in and warnings that too tight a leash will choke off recovery.

Boeing Co has sued its Russian and Ukrainian partners in satellite launch service Sea Launch, saying they refused to pay it more than $350 million following the joint-venture's bankruptcy filing in 2009, Reuters reported. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Friday, targeted RSC Energia, a company partially owned by the Russian government, and two Ukrainian state-owned companies, PO Yuzhnoye Mashinostroitelny Zavod and KB Yuzhnoye.

European Central Bank president Mario Draghi has said the Eurosystem offered "extraordinary" assistance to the Irish banking system in recent years, the Irish Times reported. Mr Draghi said the body would continue to discuss with Irish authorities "what may be achievable" with respect to the promissory note on the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), the former Anglo Irish Bank. He was responding to a letter on January 7th from Fianna Fail spokesman on finance Michael McGrath in which he urged some progress on a deal.

Announcing a €3.7bn bailout of mortgage lender SNS Reaal, Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said in a statement he had “looked at every alternative involving private parties”, but found none that could guarantee the stability of the Dutch banking system, the Financial Times reported. An earlier plan to have ING and ABN Amro, two other bailed-out institutions, rescue SNS had been blocked by the European Commission on state-aid grounds. Under the terms of SNS’s rescue, shareholders and subordinated debt holders will see their stakes wiped out.

With the global economy still struggling to recover from the financial maelstrom five years ago, governments around the world have been criticized for largely failing to punish the bankers who were responsible for the calamity. But even here in Iceland, a country of just 320,000 that has gone after financiers with far more vigor than the United States and other countries hit by the crisis, obtaining criminal convictions has proved devilishly difficult, the International Herald Tribune reported.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk turned the screw tighter on his treasury minister Friday by saying the official’s job and place in the cabinet depended on putting the country’s troubled flag-carrier, LOT Polish Airlines, on secure financial footing, The Wall Street Journal Emerging Europe blog reported. Mikolaj Budzanowski, who has been treasury minister since November 2011, is responsible for managing state-controlled businesses and pushing on with a privatization drive to sell hundreds of small companies as well as billion-dollar stakes in larger ones.