European Union

The European Union is floating a plan to cap the price of Russian diesel at $100 a barrel — a level that might help to stave off the very worst effects of a fuel-imports ban that the bloc will impose on Moscow in just 10 days’ time, Bloomberg News reported. The EU’s executive arm is considering cap levels after the Group of Seven nations offered a price range based in part on the existing cap on Russian crude oil. The thresholds are expected to apply from Feb. 5, the same date as the EU will ban almost all imports of refined Russian products as punishment for the nation’s invasion of Ukraine.

European Union lawmakers backed a draft law on Tuesday to implement the final leg of post-financial global bank capital rules, adding "prohibitive" requirements to cover risks from cryptoassets, Reuters reported. The European Parliament's economic affairs committee approved a draft law to implement Basel III capital rules from January 2025, though backing several temporary divergences to give banks more time to adapt.

The UK and European Union are nearing an agreement on customs aimed at reducing trade friction between Great Britain and Northern Ireland as they prepare to intensify wider post-Brexit negotiations, Bloomberg News reported. Officials hope to announce significant progress toward a solution for customs arrangements if discussions go well over the coming days, according to people familiar with the matter. Talks are ongoing and a successful outcome is not guaranteed, the people said.

Britain and the European Union have not yet entered a more intense phase of negotiations - the so-called negotiating "tunnel" - in their talks to amend post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said, Reuters reported. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the two sides are preparing to enter the more intense phase of the long-standing negotiations as soon as next week.

Britain’s foreign minister is meeting politicians and businesspeople in Belfast on Wednesday, bearing good news: The U.K. and the European Union are inching closer to settling a post-Brexit trade dispute that has brought economic headaches and political turmoil to Northern Ireland, the Associated Press reported. James Cleverly is traveling to Belfast two days after Britain and the EU made a significant breakthrough, striking a data-sharing agreement that will give the EU access to real-time information about goods moving to Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.

Individuals will now be able to alert EU competition regulators about merger breaches or illegal state aid, via an anonymous antitrust whistleblower tool previously reserved for cartels, the European Commission said on Monday, Reuters reported. The tool, introduced in 2017, results in some 100 messages received yearly, helping the EU competition watchdog detect unlawful practices more quickly and contributing to the success of competition investigations.

The euro zone's unemployment rate was unchanged at a record low in November as expected, with the absolute number of people without jobs falling slightly further, the European Union's statistics office Eurostat said on Monday, Reuters reported. Eurostat said that the unemployment rate in the 20 countries now sharing the euro in November 2022 was 6.5% of the workforce, the same as in October and in line with forecasts by economists polled by Reuters.

Spain will seek European Union permission to extend its temporary cap on reference prices for natural gas and coal used by power plants until at least the end of 2024, Energy Minister Teresa Ribera said on Monday, Reuters reported. The so-called Iberian mechanism, in place in Spain and Portugal after the two countries reached a deal with the European Commission in the spring of 2022, is a joint scheme through which fossil fuel plants' power costs are subsidised in a bid to bring down soaring electricity prices.

European Union lawmakers are poised to toughen up controls over foreign bank branches, which could be forced to become subsidiaries that tie up more capital, lawmaker compromises seen by Reuters showed. The bloc is updating its rules for banks, partly to implement the final leg of post-financial crisis bank capital rules known as Basel III. The move is being closely watched by banks based outside the EU that operate branches in the bloc.