Poland’s Finance Minister Andrzej Domanski expects the country will face the European Union’s procedure for its excessive deficit last year, Bloomberg News reported. Domanski told reporters on Monday he hopes the EU’s executive will be lenient in demanding budget cuts because the government needs to increase defense spending. “The procedure will be definitely launched,” he said on the sidelines of a financial congress in Sopot, northern Poland.

New car registrations in the European Union jumped in April, driven by strong performance in major markets and the benefit of two extra selling days, the Wall Street Journal reported. Registrations, which reflect sales, rose about 14% on year, the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association said Wednesday. Consumers in Spain, Germany, France and Italy boosted the EU car industry after a slump in March. An early Easter holiday also helped, giving April two extra days of sales compared with a year ago, ACEA said.

The eurozone’s financial system faces less acute threats to stability as it appears increasingly unlikely that the currency area’s economy will slide into a deep recession, the European Central Bank said. However, the central bank warned that geopolitical and policy uncertainty remains “elevated” and that the potential for economic or financial shocks remains “high,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Geopolitical risks continue to cloud the outlook for financial stability,” ECB Vice-President Luis de Guindos said Thursday.

The high concentration in crypto trading on a handful of exchanges, with Binance alone accounting for about half the market, raises concerns about the impact of a failure on the sector, the EU's securities watchdog said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The bloc is rolling out the world's first comprehensive set of rules to regulate trading in cryptoassets such as bitcoin, Ether and Tether, requiring exchanges to be authorised. The European Securities and Markets Authority's detailed analysis of what's being traded and by whom found that so far the euro currency plays only a minor role.

European Union leaders will call next week for a harmonisation of the 27-nation bloc's bankruptcy and corporate tax laws to attract more private capital for the EU shift to renewable energy and a more digital economy, a draft document showed, Reuters reported. Draft conclusions of a summit of EU leaders scheduled for April 17-18, seen by Reuters, also showed leaders would call for the development of a European securitisation market and for better supervision of cross-border financial market actors.

The FTX estate has agreed to drop a lawsuit that sought to claw back at least $323.5 million from the original owners of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange’s European unit, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Under a proposed settlement, the two main targets of the lawsuit—FTX Europe co-founders Patrick Gruhn and Robin Matzke—agreed to buy back the unit’s assets for $32.7 million. Details of the proposed settlement emerged in a Thursday court filing from the FTX estate. The deal still needs to be approved by a judge.

The European Union's economy is stronger as a result of the recovery fund, set up to drive post-pandemic growth, which has boosted jobs, investment and offset some of the impact of the Ukraine war, the European Commission said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Officially known as the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the 723 billion euro ($780.84 billion) fund, launched in 2021 for a six-year period has so far disbursed 225 billion euros.

The EU adopted a law to set aside windfall profits made on frozen Russian central bank assets, it said on Monday, in a first concrete step towards the bloc's aim of using the money to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine, Reuters reported. The EU and the Group of Seven nations (G7) froze some 300 billion euros ($323 billion) of Russian central bank assets following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine. The EU and G7 have been debating if and how these funds can be used for over a year.

Crypto companies based outside the EU will only be able to directly serve customers within the bloc under very limited conditions to avoid unfair competition, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) proposed on Monday, Reuters reported. The EU approved the world's first comprehensive rules for crypto markets last year, known as MiCA, a groundbreaking move in an online sector where national borders have been hard to police.

Banks in the European Union face closer scrutiny of how they assess the impact of interest rate changes on their balance sheets after an initial examination uncovered a patchwork of approaches, the bloc's banking watchdog said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The European Banking Authority (EBA) last year discussed with banks how they apply a rule known as interest rate risk in the banking book or IRRBB written by the global Basel Committee.