European Union

Russia’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline lost the latest round of its legal fight against European Union gas market rules, in a largely symbolic court defeat for the now-shuttered project, Bloomberg News reported. Gazprom PJSC-controlled Nord Stream 2 should have foreseen that the bloc would use its powers to “extend the internal market rules to cover gas pipelines from third countries,” the General Court said in its re-examination of the case on Wednesday.
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EU Approaches a Forced Labor Ban

The European Union is one step closer to completing a long-awaited bloc-wide ban on the sale of products made with forced labor, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Council of the EU on Tuesday approved a regulation that would forbid throughout the bloc’s 27 member states the sale of goods made with forced labor either within Europe or outside it. The law now goes to the presidents of the European Parliament and the council for signatures. The move comes more than two years after the commission first proposed a regulation, and as the U.S.
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The European Banking Authority (EBA) has released new guidelines aimed at ensuring compliance with the European Union's restrictive measures for payment service providers (PSPs) and crypto-asset service providers (CASPs), TheStreet.com reported. The announcement on Nov. 14 underscores the EU's commitment to strengthening the regulatory framework governing financial transactions, including crypto transfers. The guidelines specify the responsibilities of services providers when transferring funds or cryptocurrencies, ensuring adherence to both EU-wide and national sanctions.
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Banks in the euro region have about €1.3 trillion ($1.4 billion) in outstanding loans to commercial real estate investors and credit quality is “visibly deteriorating,” European Central Bank researchers found in a study of the links between CRE and the financial system, Bloomberg reported. “Exposures are not evenly spread across banks, and a tail of smaller, specialized banks with larger exposures” may “experience stress,” according to the report. The researchers pointed to a rise in non-performing loans as evidence of the worsening creditworthiness.

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