Insufficient checks and safeguards on how EU member countries spend a massive aid program designed to help them bounce back from the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic are creating possibilities for fraud and mismanagement, the bloc's financial watchdog warned on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s deal to solve the bitter dispute with the European Union over Northern Ireland’s trading arrangements has sparked hope in the City of London that the two sides could finally formalize a pledge to work together on setting rules for banks and financial markets, Bloomberg News reported. The so-called memorandum of understanding on financial rules may seem like a fairly low bar for such economically-tied neighbors. But in the recent history of post-Brexit relations, it would count for progress.

The European Union will seek to rein in generous spending by member states permitted to help households and businesses through the Covid pandemic and energy crisis as it sets out a return to stricter budgetary discipline, Bloomberg News reported. Governments will be instructed to withdraw support and consolidate national budgets when the European Commission adopts its fiscal guidance for 2024 on Wednesday, according to an EU official.

Britain and the European Union have reached a new agreement on post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland, raising hopes that more than six years of wrangling over the U.K.’s departure from the bloc may finally come to an end, the Associated Press reported. The deal, announced Monday by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is designed to replace existing rules that have been criticized for effectively creating a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, weakening the region’s links to Britain.

A new deal agreed between Britain and the European Union to amend the Northern Ireland Protocol will allow the Stormont assembly to stop EU laws applying in the province, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Monday, Reuters reported. "Many had called for Stormont to have a say over these laws. But the 'Stormont break' goes further and means that Stormont can in fact stop them from applying in Northern Ireland," Sunak told a news conference.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Union leader Ursula von der Leyen are set to hold face-to-face talks, with expectations high they will seal a deal to resolve a thorny post-Brexit trade dispute, the Associated Press reported. That would mark a breakthrough after months of bitter wrangling that has soured U.K.-EU relations, sparked the collapse of the Belfast-based regional government and and threatened to set back Northern Ireland's decades-old peace process. In a joint statement on Sunday the U.K.

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.