France's government has promised €20 billion ($25 billion) in tax credits to businesses as part of a "competitiveness pact" that it hopes will spark innovation and lower unemployment - but falls short of calls in a recent report for a "shock" to the economy, the Associated Press reported. The announcement of the plan Tuesday came a day after a government-commissioned report — by Louis Gallois, former head of Airbus parent EADS — said the country's ailing economy needed a big kick to stay globally competitive.

Netoil Inc., a Dubai-based company, has submitted a revised offer for insolvent Petroplus Holdings AG’s Petit-Couronne refinery in Normandy, France, teaming up with BP Plc., Bloomberg Businessweek reported. “We didn’t have a supplier before, now, we have a letter of intent from BP to supply 120,000 barrels of crude a day to the refinery for a three-year period,” Roger Tamraz, Netoil’s chairman, said today in a telephone interview from Paris.

The European Union summit that ended Friday suggested Germany and France, always awkward partners in managing the three-year-old euro crisis, are increasingly at odds over how to resolve it, The Wall Street Journal reported. The summit produced a tortuous compromise between the currency bloc's two biggest nations over the creation of a new euro-zone banking supervisor, but it also brought simmering disagreements between Berlin and Paris into the open.

A Spanish court has accepted a filing for bankruptcy from two investment firms that own 31 percent of French property company Gecina, Reuters reported. Alteco and MAG Import filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 3 after a bank refused to refinance a 1.6 billion euro ($2 billion) loan, leaving nearly a dozen lenders exposed. Alteco and MAG Import met conditions for voluntary bankruptcy, two Spanish mercantile courts said in documents released on Tuesday. French bank Natixis has the most exposure to the loan, at 266 million euros.

French engineering group Geci International's Sky Aircraft unit was placed under creditor protection on Thursday, giving it six months to find partners to save the project, Reuters reported. Geci said following the ruling by the commercial court at Briey in eastern France it would use the time to pursue all the options it was exploring to safeguard the future of the Skylander light aircraft. "Management and the company are mobilised to seek financing solutions and to assure a future for the Skylander programme as well as all its staff," Geci said in a statement.

Two Spanish investment firms that own 31 percent of French property company Gecina have filed one of the biggest bankruptcy actions in Spanish history after a bank refused to refinance a 1.6 billion euro ($2.1 billion) loan, Reuters reported. The potential bankruptcy is the latest chapter in Spain's debt saga since its 2008 real estate crash, which forced banks to write billions of euros off property investments.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Paris on Sunday to protest against the spread of economic "austerity" in France and Europe, The Guardian reported. Chanting "resistance, resistance", the crowds had been rallied by around 60 organisations, including the leftwing Front de Gauche and the French Communist party, which oppose the European budget treaty. "Today is the day the French people launch a movement against the politics of austerity," said the Front de Gauche president, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Crédit Agricole SA will likely have to pour a further €600 million ($779 million) to €700 million into its flailing Greek unit before it will be able sell the subsidiary, according to people from both the private and public sectors with knowledge of the sales process, The Wall Street Journal reported. The French lender's once grand ambitions in southern Europe have been badly bruised by the sovereign-debt crisis.

Greece should be allowed more time to meet deficit targets set by international lenders provided it is sincere about reforming its economy, French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on Sunday, Reuters reported. Near-bankrupt Greece needs the European Union and International Monetary Fund's blessing on spending cuts worth nearly 12 billion euros ($16 billion) to unlock its next tranche of aid, without which it faces default and a potential exit from the euro zone. "The answer must not be a Greek exit from the euro zone," Ayrault said in an interview with news website Mediapart.

France's enduring ability to defy economic gravity - adding new taxes on top of one of the highest fiscal burdens in Europe, preserving short working hours, job protection, early retirement and generous welfare benefits - is about to be tested, Reuters reported in an analysis. President Francois Hollande has promised to bring the deficit down to 3 percent of gross domestic product in next week's 2013 budget from a forecast 4.5 percent this year.