The number of unemployed people in Germany has topped three million for the first time in a decade, labour office figures showed on Friday, raising the stakes for the government's huge investment plans to deliver quick results, Reuters reported. A total of 3.02 million people were unemployed in August in seasonally unadjusted terms, with an increase of 46,000 in the number of people out of work from the previous month. "In Germany, three million is not just a number.

Confidence in the eurozone’s economic outlook fell back as sluggish growth weighed on sentiment, with little hope of a major rebound ahead, surveys of households and business showed, the Wall Street Journal reported. The European Commission said Thursday that its economic sentiment indicator for the currency area edged down to 95.2 this month from 95.7 in July, thwarting economists’ expectations of a slight uptick in sentiment. Consumer confidence fell back, as did sentiment in industry and construction.

The property development company Lakea has filed for bankruptcy at the Pohjanmaa District Court following years of worsening financial problems and rising debt obligations, the Helsinki Times reported. In a statement released on Tuesday, the company confirmed that it will also withdraw earlier restructuring applications submitted in May on behalf of 24 housing cooperatives operated under its Omaksi model. The firm said the decision followed a lack of support from key creditors. Board members of both Lakea and its Omaksi housing subsidiaries announced their resignations the same day.

France risks seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as its government teeters on the brink of collapse, its finance minister has warned, The Telegraph reported. French long-term borrowing costs hit their highest level since 2011 on Tuesday amid fears the second collapse of its government within a year would leave it unable to tackle a budget deficit, which is on course to hit 5.4pc of GDP this year.

German banks blocked PayPal payments totalling more than 10 billion euros ($11.7 billion) over fraud concerns, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Wednesday. The payments were halted on Monday after lenders flagged millions of suspicious direct debits from PayPal that appeared last week, the newspaper said. A PayPal spokesperson said a temporary service interruption had affected "certain transactions from our banking partners and potentially their customers", but that the issue had now been resolved.

The number of Dutch retail businesses that went bankrupt rose sharply from April to June, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) has found. A total of 89 businesses were affected, compared to 66 during the same period a year earlier, the national data center said on Tuesday, NLTimes.nl reported. Despite the rise in retail bankruptcies, the number of businesses that went bust fell by 7 percent across all economic sectors. There were several high profile bankruptcies during the second quarter, including fashion chain Gerry Weber.

Selling Thames Water to a Chinese-controlled company could give Beijing access to sensitive customer data, which might pose a risk to national security, a senior former intelligence officer has warned, The Times reported. Sir Simon Gass, who served as chairman of the government’s joint intelligence committee until two years ago, said that proposals to hand Thames Water over to the Hong Kong-based infrastructure firm CKI required “close scrutiny from a national security perspective”.

The Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien ceased operations at its Freyung location on August 21, 2025, after more than four decades. The closure is related to the economic consequences of the Signa insolvency, which made the institution's operations impossible, Aviation.direct reported. The last exhibition at the venerable venue, Mensch Berlin, was a popular success. The show featured more than 120 works of art from the post-war German period and the period of reunification. Thousands of visitors took the opportunity to visit the exhibition and bid farewell to the Kunstforum.