The U.K. has long been torn between two mutually exclusive desires: Voters want European levels of welfare with American levels of taxation, the Wall Street Journal reported. By accident or design, that debate is slowly being resolved in the direction of higher taxes, as Britain’s Labour government prepares its second major tax increase in as many years. The U.K. is confronting an issue facing growing numbers of rich nations: How to pay for rising government spending without taking on ever more debt and spooking financial markets. In the coming weeks, U.K.

The Czech National Bank (CNB) on Thursday announced the creation of a $1 million test portfolio that includes bitcoin, a USD stablecoin, and a tokenized deposit, CoinDesk.com reported. Approved by the bank board on Oct. 30, the pilot is designed to give the central bank hands-on experience with blockchain-based assets, which it says could reshape how payments and financial systems operate in the future. The total amount invested will not be actively increased, said the bank, and the acquisition was made outside of the bank's existing international reserves.

Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reports that, adjusted for court days, 253 businesses (including sole proprietorships) were declared bankrupt in October, CBS.nl reported. That was 75 fewer than in the same month in 2024, a decrease of 23 percent. The number of bankruptcies fell by 8 percent in October, relative to September. The bankruptcy rate, the number of bankruptcies per 100 thousand businesses, was 6.8 in October 2025. In October 2024, 9.0 per 100 thousand businesses were declared bankrupt. Since the start of the series in 2015, the bankruptcy rate peaked at 24.8 in March 2015.

Andrew Bailey has claimed that money-printing by the Bank of England has saved the Government as much as £125 billion, the Telegraph reported. The Bank’s Governor said new analysis showed the policy of creating money to buy bonds during crises aided the public finances over the past 15 years by pushing down borrowing costs. Between 2009 and 2022 the Bank bought bonds totalling £895bn under a policy known as quantitative easing (QE), which aimed to relieve pressure on debt markets. “The fiscal savings from lower government debt issuance costs as a result of QE ...

The Eurogroup — the meeting of finance ministers from eurozone countries — today will discuss whether the Italian government's use of discretionary or "golden" powers to block UniCredit's acquisition of a competitor was justified, EuroNews.com reported. Italy’s golden power is a national security filter for deals in strategic assets such as defence or energy and functions like a veto. The government is allowed to intervene directly in the market and stop deals that it believes are not beneficial to the country.

According to the UK’s insolvency and restructuring trade body R3, 4,709 new businesses were launched in Yorkshire and the Humber during October, representing a 5.6 per cent decrease on September’s total of 4,989, the Yorkshire Post reported. The fall in new businesses, based on an analysis of data from Creditsafe, was among the steepest in the UK and highlights a wider trend of decreasing business start-up activity across every UK region, according to R3.

Bramble Energy, a UK-based manufacturer of electrolysers and fuel cells based on printed circuit board (PCB) technology, has filed a notice of intent to appoint an insolvency administrator, according to one of its largest investors. Hydrogen Capital Growth, which holds a 12.5% stake in Bramble, said in a statement that the UK manufacturer had been seeking new financing from third-party investors but it had “recently become tapparents” that the fundraising had been unsuccessful. Without this funding, “the company is unable to operate viably,” HydrogenInsight.com reported.

The German company IDAGIO, which runs a specialist classical music streaming service, has completed its insolvency proceedings in self-administration, theViolinChannel.com reported. The whole process took about four months, and the creditors have unanimously agreed to the insolvency plan proposed by the company. The proceedings will soon be approved by the Charlottenberg District Court. The new shareholders are the Berlin-based music entrepreneur Ki Soo Lee and Jim Chang from Singapore.

Weak domestic demand rather than U.S. tariffs is the main reason China is dumping surplus product on European markets at rock-bottom prices at the expense of domestic producers, a European Central Bank study argued on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Pressure has been growing on the European Union to act on surging imports from China as U.S. tariffs force Beijing to find new markets for products it now struggles to sell. "Escalating trade tensions between the United States and China might result in a further diversion of Chinese exports to Europe," the ECB argued in an Economic Bulletin article.

Trade unions in Ireland and Brussels have welcomed a decision by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to reject a challenge by Denmark to the validity of the EU directive on the Adequate Minimum Wage, the Irish Times reported. In its decision on Tuesday, the Court found that the EU had exceeded its powers in two specific areas of the directive but upheld the validity of a majority of its provisions. Denmark, with the support of Sweden, had challenged the validity of the entire directive, claiming that the EU was not permitted to legislate on wages.