Households face increased bills unless councils are given greater powers, the leader of Cotswold District Council has warned, BBC.com reported. Councillor Joe Harris added that many councils only have weeks between learning how much money they will receive before publishing their spending plans. “You wouldn’t run a business like that - we need long-term funding certainty so we can plan two or three years ahead,” Mr Harris added. The government has promised to “get councils back on their feet” by introducing multi-year funding settlements.

The European Central Bank must think hard about how it deals with risks and uncertainty in an era of more-volatile inflation and less clarity about monetary-policy transmission, President Christine Lagarde said, Bloomberg News reported. “We should reflect on how our policy framework incorporates risk assessments,” she said Friday in a speech at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, referring to the ongoing review of the ECB’s policy strategy.

The European Union’s top official said on a trip to Kyiv on Friday that Europe would offer Ukraine a loan of 35 billion euros, about $39 billion, backed by frozen Russian assets, the New York Times reported. European leaders said the loan would move forward initially without contributions from the United States, after talks between American and European officials stalled in recent days. The official, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to reiterate Europe’s continued support for his country.

Germany’s government took a first step toward privatizing Uniper SE, the utility it nationalized at the peak of Europe’s energy crisis in 2022 after Russia curbed gas flows to the region, Bloomberg News reported. The nation’s finance ministry said an initial public offering is its preferred option for selling the company, according to a statement. It’s also considering off-market sale alternatives. The announcement marks a momentous step after the bailout just under two years ago, which was one of the largest in German corporate history.

The Bank of England kept interest rates at 5.0% on Thursday, saying it would be careful about future cuts, and also held off from running down its bond holdings at a faster pace, avoiding extra budget strains for finance minister Rachel Reeves, Reuters reported. The Monetary Policy Committee voted 8-1 to keep rates on hold. Only external member Swati Dhingra voted for a further quarter-point rate cut after the BoE last month delivered its first reduction to borrowing costs since 2020.

Norway’s central bank held its key policy rate at 4.5%, a level that is expected to remain unchanged until the end of the year as a weak krone continues to threaten efforts to bring inflation down, the Wall Street Journal reported. The policy rate has been at 4.5% since December 2023 and has helped slow inflation significantly from its peak, but underlying inflation hasn’t declined to the same extent, while a rapid rise in business costs and the krone’s depreciation will likely restrain further disinflation, the bank said Thursday.

Embattled German battery-maker Varta AG has adjusted its restructuring plan to help win the support of a key group of lenders, paving the way for its approval, Bloomberg News reported. A “large proportion” of holders of its €250 milllion ($278 million) in promissory notes — also called Schuldschein — have expressed interest in the improved deal, the company said in a statement Tuesday. The Schuldschein lenders had originally resisted the restructuring plan and submitted a rival deal.

Lenders to Berlin-based SellerX canceled a plan to auction off the brand aggregator on Tuesday, opting instead to continue debt negotiations with shareholders of the struggling company, Bloomberg News reported. SellerX confirmed that the auction, initiated by BlackRock Inc. and Victory Park Capital Advisors LLC last month, has been canceled.

The U.K.’s annual rate of inflation was unchanged in August, despite prices of services increasing at a faster rate, reinforcing expectations that the Bank of England will leave its key interest rate unchanged Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer prices were 2.2% higher in August than the same month last year, a level of inflation that matched July’s rate, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal also expected inflation to remain at 2.2%.

The Bank of France cut its forecast for French inflation next year to well below the European Central Bank’s 2% target, adding to signals encouraging policymakers to pursue interest-rate cuts, Bloomberg News reported. The pace of annual price increases in the euro area’s second-largest economy will ease to 1.5% on average in 2025 from 2.5% in 2024, the Bank of France said in its September economic forecasts. That’s lower than the 1.7% it predicted in June, due mainly to expectations of weaker electricity prices. The Bank of France expects the rate to rise to 1.7% in 2026, it said on Tuesday.