By the time voters next go to the polls in 2015, the number of higher-rate taxpayers in the United Kingdom will have doubled in 20 years, following chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne’s budget changes on Wednesday, the Irish Times reported. An extra million people will have been dragged into the 40p rate by 2015 because of Mr Osborne’s decision to increase income tax thresholds by just 1 percentage point, the respected Institute of Fiscal Studies declared – bringing the total to five million.

The European Central Bank has slashed its eurozone growth forecasts and warned that recession will drag on into the middle of next year, sending the euro plunging below €1.30 to the dollar, The Telegraph reported. Mario Draghi, the ECB’s president, said the governing council had discussed a cut in overnight deposit rate to below zero for the first time, and was "operationally ready" to do so if needed, The comment sent the euro into a nosedive, dropping from $1.3075 to $1.2950 in just two hours.

Italy faces a deep crisis as its biggest steel plants struggle for survival, putting it in the forefront of a permanent decline in western Europe's steel sector and increasing cost pressures on many of the region's industries, Reuters reported. Producing crude steel in the European Union, where supply is 30 percent more than demand, has become too costly. Only the most technologically and environmentally advanced plants are set to survive. Italy's largest steel producers, ILVA and Lucchini, face potential shutdowns, which could cost the country 25,000 to 30,000 direct and indirect jobs.

For the past year, as Chancellor Angela support has struggled to forge a euro-crisis solution that will pass muster with German voters, Peter Bofinger, a 58-year-old University of Wuerzburg economics professor, has been a leading voice among her economic opposition, Bloomberg Markets reports in its January issue. Where Merkel has preached austerity, Bofinger has called for stimulus; where she has demanded fiscal responsibility from debtor nations, he has pleaded for collective liability among all members of the single European currency.

Trade unions are planning to hold a series of demonstrations and rallies around the country in February to call for a restructuring of Ireland’s debt, the Irish Times reported. Unions have argued that such a restructuring of debt is a prerequisite for economic recovery and a necessary condition for the maintenance of social cohesion. The proposed demonstrations will be timed to coincide with a meeting of the EU Council of Ministers and would take place in advance of the planned payment of €3.1 billion by the Government on the Anglo Irish Bank promissory note.

OAO Mechel, Russia’s largest producer of steel-making coal, got a year’s breathing space on repayments to a $1 billion loan by signing a restructuring deal with banks, Bloomberg reported. The company, which reported an $823 million loss for the second quarter of the year because of falling coal prices, got banks to agree to an amendment and restatement of the syndicated loan, it said in a statement distributed by Globe Newswire. The facility, maturing in 2015, would have repaid $600 million next year in monthly installments and these will be delayed for 12 months, it said.

Much has been written over the past year about the risks of a two-speed Europe in which the 17 euro zone countries move ahead more rapidly than the rest of the European Union, Reuters reported in an analysis. Such a divergence, the conventional wisdom goes, could mark the beginning of an unravelling of nearly 60 years of post-war European integration and tear the EU apart. Yet rather than having one speed, two speeds, no speed at all or being on the brink of shifting into reverse, the European Union more accurately resembles a three-lane highway.

Welfare benefits are to be squeezed, teachers forced to accept performance-related pay and half a million people will be dragged into the higher tax bracket under tax and spending changes announced in London yesterday, the Irish Times reported. Welfare benefits will rise by just 1 per cent for each of the next three years, while housing and child benefits will rise by the same for two years, said chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne. He added that those on benefits could not be immune from pain.

Greece is considered Europe’s most corrupt country, ranking roughly on par with Colombia and Swaziland in an annual global survey of perceived corruption released Wednesday, the International Herald Tribune reported. Transparency International, a corruption watchdog, ranked Greece 94th out of 176 countries in the 2012 corruption perceptions index, which surveys economic experts about the perceived level of public sector corruption. Last year, Greece ranked 80th.

Portugal won't seek a Greek-style debt restructuring deal, but will stay alert to opportunities to discuss better terms for the country where the principle of equal treatment applies, the country's top officials have said Tuesday, Dow Jones reported. "We don't want to be treated like Greece and have a solution identical to Greece's because we don't have a situation identical to the Greek's," Portugal Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho was quoted as saying by state-agency Lusa in a trip to Cape Verde.