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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The tone of the most recent talks between the European Union and Britain on resolving the status of Northern Ireland after Brexit was very positive, giving confidence that a solution will soon be found, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Speaking after meeting her British counterpart James Cleverly in London, she said that war in Ukraine served as a reminder to focus on the most important task of letting people live in peace and freedom.
ExxonMobil is suing the EU in a bid to force it to scrap the bloc’s new windfall tax on oil groups, arguing Brussels exceeded its legal authority by imposing the levy, the Irish Times reported. The lawsuit is the most significant response yet against the tax from the oil industry, which has been targeted by western governments amid a surge in energy prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
European nations reached a deal to cap natural gas prices at €180, ending months of political wrangling over whether to intervene in an energy crisis that has risked pushing the region into a recession, Bloomberg News reported. The so-called gas market correction mechanism — a temporary measure designed to prevent extreme price swings — will apply from Feb. 15, according to people familiar with the matter.
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The European Commission plans to seek feedback on whether the 27-country bloc needs to loosen state aid rules to allow governments to support companies affected by the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, Reuters reported. The $430 billion act, which grants consumers tax credits for U.S.-produced electric vehicles (EV) and other green products, has triggered fears it could disadvantage European Union companies and tempt businesses to relocate to the United States.
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