German inflation unexpectedly remained unchanged in February, highlighting the challenges for the European Central Bank in deciding how quickly and how far to cut interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices increased 2.8% from a year ago, the statistics office said Friday. Economists in a Bloomberg survey had expected a slight slowdown to 2.7%. The report follows earlier figures showing French inflation retreated to its lowest level in four years, while price gains in Italy surprisingly held steady.

Altice France, the European telecom giant led by billionaire Patrick Drahi, has struck a global debt deal with investors holding more than $25 billion in bonds and loans, one of the largest of a new breed of restructuring transactions, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The deal, which includes most of Altice’s creditors, could be the largest liability-management exercise for a European business to date.

President Donald Trump on Thursday said he planned to impose tariffs on Canada and France over their digital services taxes on U.S. technology giants, which has been a long-standing irritant, Reuters reported. Canada, seeking to address the challenge of taxing digital giants like Google parent Alphabet and Amazon.com that can book their profits in low-tax countries, began imposing the tax in June last year. Trump tasked his economics team on Thursday with devising a plan to impose reciprocal tariffs on every country that levied duties on U.S. imports.

France’s economy is heading for only slight growth at the start of the year and uncertainty remains high for business leaders, the country’s central bank said, Bloomberg News reported. Gross domestic product will likely rise between 0.1% and 0.2% in the first quarter, with underlying momentum little changed from the end of 2024, according to the Bank of France’s monthly survey of 8,500 companies.

An artificial intelligence race is heating up between the United States and China — but don’t count Europe out. That was the pitch that President Emmanuel Macron of France made on Monday as Paris hosted an A.I. summit, where government leaders, top tech executives and academic experts have gathered to discuss the hopes surrounding A.I., as well as the fears of economic and societal disruption that the rapidly evolving technology has fueled, the New York Times reported. “We are back in the race,” Mr.

French factory production unexpectedly dropped at the end of the year, contributing to a backsliding in the eurozone’s second-largest economy, with few signs of a rapid rebound at the start of 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported. Total output of goods was 0.7% lower on month in December, reversing a slight increase in November, statistics agency Insee said Wednesday. That was a worse result than the stagnation forecast by economists, according to a poll compiled by The Wall Street Journal, and means output decreased in seven out of 12 months last year.

French inflation was stable at the beginning of the year, figures showed Friday, a day after the European Central Bank again lowered its key interest rates amid a eurozone economy going nowhere fast, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer prices were 1.8% higher on year in January, the same rate as in December, according to EU-harmomized numbers published by France’s statistics authority. That was a little less than economists had expected, according to a poll compiled by The Wall Street Journal, and keeps inflation below the 2% threshold targeted by the ECB.

French investigators said on Tuesday they had opened a judicial probe into money laundering, tax fraud and other charges at Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Reuters reported. The economic and financial crime section of the Paris public prosecutor's office (JUNALCO) said in a statement that the probe includes money laundering in connection with drug trafficking. The investigation is examining the period from 2019 to 2024, involving offences committed in France but also in all European Union countries, JUNALCO said.

Angell, a French smart electric bike startup, has announced in an email to customers that the company is declaring insolvency and approaching a court to ask for judicial liquidation, TechCrunch.com reported. “It’s over for Angell,” said company co-founder and CEO Marc Simoncini on Instagram.