The timing of Ireland’s return to borrowing in the international markets and the cost of that borrowing remains unclear, despite the Yes vote in the fiscal referendum being positive for the country, according to the credit ratings agency Fitch, the Irish Times reported. The public endorsement of the EU fiscal compact “removes a potential source of considerable uncertainty about Ireland’s future funding” as the vote has removed the immediate concern about where Ireland could find a second bailout, Fitch said.

Debt-burdened French poultry group Doux collapsed into administration on Friday after failing to reach an agreement with bankers, putting at risk more than 3,000 jobs, Reuters reported. "A judicial administrator has been selected who will help the company's management to draw up a plan to keep operating, in France, that will support jobs and the survival of the company," Doux, one of the world's largest poultry exporters, said in a statement. "The Doux Group will immediately put together a plan to help strategic suppliers and breeders so that they do not experience any difficulty," it said.

Germany is sending strong signals that it would eventually be willing to lift its objections to ideas such as common euro-zone bonds or mutual support for European banks if other European governments were to agree to transfer further powers to Europe, The Wall Street Journal reported. If embraced, the move would deepen in fundamental ways Europe's political and fiscal union and represent one of the boldest steps taken by the bloc since the euro was launched.

The UK could be called upon to underwrite up to €6bn towards a bailout of Greece if it exited the euro, according to the Open Europe think-tank, the Financial Times reported. David Cameron would face vocal calls for large concessions – including a referendum on EU membership – if a Greek exit prompted full treaty change, the group says in a report published on Monday. Ahead of the Greek general elections on June 17 there are growing concerns about the consequences should Athens leave the single currency in a so-called “Grexit”.

Madrid will regret refusing a front-door bailout. The straightforward way of dealing with Spain’s banking problem would be for the government to borrow 50 to 100 billion euros from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) or the soon-to-be-created European Stability Mechanism (ESM), and inject that money into the banks. But Mariano Rajoy, the country’s prime minister, continues to deny publicly that the country needs such a rescue, Reuters reported in a Breakingviews commentary. There are probably two reasons.

Spaniards alarmed by the dire state of their banks are squirreling money abroad at the fastest rate since records began, figures showed on Thursday, and the credit ratings of eight regions were cut, Reuters reported. Spain is the next country in the firing line of the euro zone's debt crisis, with spendthrift regions and shaky banks threatening to blow a hole in state finances and pushing funding costs towards levels that signal the need for a bailout.

The European Union pressed Spain on Thursday to urgently clear up doubts over its mammoth rescue of stricken lender Bankia so as to calm investors fearing a financial breakdown, Agence France-Presse reported. As investors exited Spanish government bonds and stocks, the bloc called on Madrid to provide details of its bailout of Bankia. Bankia is asking the state for 19 billion euros ($24 billion) to repair its books, in addition to 4.5 billion euros already injected, the biggest rescue in Spanish banking history.

Mario Draghi, ECB president, has criticised the Spanish government for underestimating the scale of Bankia’s troubles and called for the supervision of Europe’s most important banks to be taken out of the hands of national regulators, the Financial Times reported. Mr Draghi told the European Parliament on Thursday that, when confronted with a “dramatic need” to rescue banks such as Bankia and Dexia, a Belgian lender, national supervisors repeatedly underestimated the amount a rescue would cost. “There is a first assessment, then a second, a third, a fourth,” Mr Draghi said.

Investors holding notes with a nominal value of USD1.75bn against the UK subsidiary of Petroplus look increasingly unlikely to recover more than a small part of their principal after the administrator of the UK oil refinery business said it had not been able to sell the site after four months of trying, International Financing Review reported. "We have worked tirelessly to explore all feasible options for the refinery. We have had contact with over 100 possible investors and purchasers.

Today, Greece is convulsing ahead of its most critical election in at least a generation. One of the flash points is the new property tax—a window into what has gone wrong with Greece, and with Europe's plan to rescue it, The Wall Street Journal reported. For many in the euro zone, Greece's sluggish tax receipts are a perennial frustration. For many in Greece, however, the new taxes—which fall particularly hard on those lower on the income scale—are only compounding the country's woes and stifling its economy.