French bank officials lashed out Friday at a European plan to restrict bankers' bonuses, arguing it will put the lenders at a competitive disadvantage and complicate their operations outside Europe, The Wall Street Journal reported. At a public hearing in London, bank executives and industry groups complained about rules that will force European banks to change the way they pay bonuses. The rules will require that a greater portion of the payouts take the form of stock rather than cash and that a large chunk is deferred several years rather than paid immediately.

Claiming a violation of rights to free movement, the European Commission Thursday said it has asked France to change a law that excludes nonresidents from enjoying limits on the taxes that wealthy citizens pay, a change the French government fears will force it to refund some revenue, The Wall Street Journal reported. French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde rejected the request, saying it didn't seem legitimate that France should refund taxes that may well have been paid to another country on the income in question.

President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed Tuesday “to guarantee order,” restore fuel supplies and crack down on “troublemakers,” as a quarter of France’s gas stations ran dry and other disruptions built from nationwide protests and strikes, the International Herald Tribune reported. His comments marked a hardening of the government’s resolve to hold to its program of reforming the indebted pension system despite the job actions by public workers at refineries and railways and in other key sectors. The final parliamentary vote on the plan may not come until early next week.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has aligned himself with German chancellor Angela Merkel in her push for changes to the European treaties to fortify the EU’s economic system, The Irish Times reported. In a joint declaration issued in Deauville last night, the two leaders said they had reached a new consensus on measures to strengthen Europe’s system of economic governance.

High school students clashed with police and protesters blocked two main highways in France on Monday as confrontation stiffened between an array of strikers and the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy over plans to raise the minimum age for retirement, The New York Times reported. The protests, as labor unions called for national stoppages on Tuesday, came as the Senate prepared to vote on Wednesday on a package of reforms to the retirement system proposed by Mr. Sarkozy to wrest France from the economic doldrums gripping many parts of Europe.

French strikers are extending their protest against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposed overhaul of the pension system as the government rebuffed calls to drop its plan to increase the retirement age, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported. The Paris metro and long-distance trains will be disrupted for a second day after some unions opted to stay off the job, as did port workers in Marseille. The government said it won’t back down on a plan to raise the minimum retirement age to 62 from 60, saying it’s necessary to save the pension system.

Aerospace giant Airbus says it’s confused as to why Mexicana continues to order replacement parts even though the Mexican airline hasn’t operated flights for the past month, The Wall Street Journal Bankruptcy Beat blog reported. Airbus is asking the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan for vendor protections, such as assurance that it will be paid within seven days of delivering parts, after it received several unexpected orders from Mexicana in the past two weeks.

So loud are the howls of protest from his socialist opponents, one might think that President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is about to put the nation's elderly to work in coal mines or turn them into an army of street sweepers. In fact, he is proposing merely to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62 by 2018 and also to increase by two years the age of full pension entitlement, The Wall Street Journal reported in a commentary. This relatively modest change has provoked thousands of protestors into angry demonstrations and union leaders to threaten a series of strikes.

French labor unions vowed Wednesday to amplify their protests against government plans to increase the retirement age after President Nicolas Sarkozy said he wouldn't give in on elements of a proposed pension overhaul, The Wall Street Journal reported. A coalition of six unions called on workers to participate in another one-day nationwide strike and march on Sept. 23 to challenge Mr. Sarkozy's "unfair and unacceptable" proposal to raise the standard pension age to 62 from the current 60 years old.

The French government on Friday announced a further €3.5bn of tax rises for 2011 the latest in a series of announcements that puts Paris’s austerity drive on par with Berlin’s much-criticised plan to trim its budget, the Financial Times reported. The latest announcement – intended to reassure the markets while not scaring the French public about impending austerity –- brings to €13.2bn the amount France aims to raise from tax increases next year.