European Union

The European Parliament´s budget control committee said Wednesday it has found no evidence of deceit or fraud in Spain’s handling of the 31 billion euros ($33 billion) it has received so far in special European Union post-pandemic recovery funds, the Associated Press reported. But a visiting delegation urged the Madrid government to be more transparent and flexible in its use of the funds and in providing public information about them.

Bankruptcies across the EU have soared to record levels, inflicting further misery upon Europeans at a time when soaring inflation and high energy costs have already left many of the continent's citizens on the brink of financial despair, the Brussels Times reported. According to a new report published on Friday by Eurostat, the EU's official statistics office, bankruptcies in the final quarter of 2022 rose 26.8% relative to the previous quarter.

Tough capital rules for banks holding cryptoassets must be fast-tracked in the European Union's pending banking law if Europe wants to avoid missing a globally-agreed deadline, the bloc's executive has said, Reuters reported. The global Basel Committee of banking regulators from the world's main financial centres has set a January 2025 deadline for implementing capital requirements for banks' exposures to cryptoassets such as stablecoins and bitcoin.

Polish banks suffered a potentially costly setback in the long-running saga over Swiss Franc mortgages after an adviser to the European Union’s top court said they can’t pass on extra fees to customers whose interest payments were deemed unfair, Bloomberg News reported. In cases where contested mortgage deals are voided by local courts, lenders can’t claim payments beyond reimbursements of the loan principal, Advocate General Anthony Collins of the EU Court of Justice said in a non-binding opinion Thursday.

European Union finance ministers started talks on Tuesday on reforming the EU's fiscal rules to adjust them to post-pandemic realities of high debt and large investment needs, with a view to a deal in March, Reuters reported. Some EU diplomats say an agreement might take longer, however, because of opposition from Germany and other northern European countries to European Commission proposals to negotiate individual debt reduction paths with each government, rather than have a single rule for all, as now.

Polish banks are sounding increasingly sanguine about a looming European Union court ruling that the country’s financial regulator once warned may spell a full-blown crisis for the industry, Bloomberg News reported. In the latest chapter of the saga centered around $17 billion of mainly Swiss franc-denominated loans, EU judges are set to rule whether banks can sue clients, who got their mortgage contracts canceled in courts — a way for the industry to recover some losses and deter future litigation.

The European Union's new subsidy package needs to be reworked in the coming weeks so that it is more concrete, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. "We don't have much time," Habeck told the German Bundestag lower house of parliament, adding that the package needed to be finalised before the next EU summit in March. The European Commission wants to give a boost to a climate-friendly restructuring of the economy with subsidies worth billions of euros.

EU lawmakers hope to agree on draft artificial intelligence rules next month, with the aim of clinching a deal with EU countries by the end of the year, one of the legislators steering the AI Act said, Reuters reported. The European Commission proposed the AI rules in 2021 in an attempt to foster innovation and set a global standard for a technology, used in everything from self-driving cars and chatbots to automated factories, currently led by China and the United States.

The European Union risks missing a March target to agree on a reform of its debt-limit rules in the face of resistance from countries including Germany, a prospect that may force member states into abrupt and potentially painful budgetary adjustments, Bloomberg News reported. Berlin is especially doubtful about the idea of highly indebted governments negotiating tailored plans with the European Commission to bring their spending under control and wants to see reliable enforcement tools in place.

Italy is close to clinching a deal with European Union competition authorities to reintroduce a scheme under which the state provides guarantees to help banks offload bad loans, Reuters reported. Rome has been working to renew the "GACS" scheme, which expired in June, while also tightening the terms under which the state provides guarantees to investors who buy bad bank loans repackaged as securities. Discussions with Brussels are at a very advanced stage and the terms have been for the most part agreed, the four sources briefed on the matter told Reuters.