Pilots at Lufthansa have rejected a wage offer by Germany's flagship carrier and could go on strike anytime, union VC said on Thursday, as a dispute over pay continues, Reuters reported. They had voted in favour of industrial action last month, threatening further disruption during the busy summer travel season. VC said that Lufthansa's most recent offer had been a step in the right direction but remained short of the union's demands, which include a 5.5% pay rise this year for its pilots and automatic inflation compensation thereafter.

Germany wants to create a new financial crime authority that would bundle several fragmented competencies, including sanctions enforcement, said a finance ministry paper on Tuesday, Reuters reported. There are currently more than 300 supervisory bodies across Germany, a figure the finance ministry would like to reduce. With the new authority, the finance ministry hopes to make it easier to tackle complex international money laundering cases, which have long been a weak spot for the country.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would be willing to consider easing the regulatory burden on new gas export facilities to Europe, while indicating the business case for investments may be a difficult one, Bloomberg News reported. Speaking to reporters in Montreal at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Trudeau said the challenge is that any new liquefied natural gas terminal on Canada’s eastern shore would be far from country’s western gas fields.

Uniper, Germany’s largest importer of natural gas, reported on Wednesday a loss of more than 12 billion euros (or $12.2 billion) for the first half of the year as the company coped with dwindling supplies of natural gas provided by Russia, the New York Times reported. Uniper said that the losses were a direct result of having to pay inflated prices for gas on the open market in order to make up for the Russian shortfall.

Germany’s RWE AG has turned to the debt market for funding, as Europe faces its worst energy crunch in decades, Bloomberg News reported. The company saw over 2 billion euros ($2 billion) of investor demand for at least 500 million euros of three-year bonds on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified as they aren’t authorized to speak publicly. It’s RWE’s first venture into Europe’s debt market since May and adds to the region’s busiest day for new deals in two months.

Germany plans to give the transportation of materials and equipment essential for energy production priority on the country's rail networks should water levels on the Rhine fall further and hamper shipping by river, a draft decree shows, Reuters reported. DB Netz, the rail network arm of railway operator Deutsche Bahn, has already rejigged usage conditions to give preference to trains carrying mineral oil products and hard coal for power generators as Germany tackles an energy crisis.

Cryptocurrency exchange Nuri GmbH has filed for insolvency in Berlin, according to a court filing, CoinDesk.com reported. The platform, previously called Bitwala, was founded in 2015. Nuri said the sell-off in the crypto market coupled with the collapse of Celsius Network ultimately led to the decision. The price of bitcoin (BTC) has fallen from $69,000 to as low as $17,000 over the past nine months, with several key companies in the industry struggling to keep afloat. Bitcoin was recently trading around $23,000.

The economic situation is deteriorating and the outlook is fragile in Germany, Europe's largest economy, its finance minister said on Wednesday, defending his plans to raise income tax thresholds in response to soaring inflation, Reuters reported. The German economy stagnated in the second quarter, with the war in Ukraine, soaring energy prices, the pandemic and supply disruptions bringing it to the edge of a downturn. Inflation is running at 8.5%.

Germany's economy will lose more than 260 billion euros ($265 billion) in added value by 2030 due to the Ukraine war and high energy prices, spelling negative effects for the labour market, according to a study by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Reuters reported. In comparison with expectations for a peaceful Europe, Germany's price-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) will be 1.7% lower next year and there will be about 240,000 fewer people in employment, said the study published on Tuesday.

The German government will have to amend its energy security law again in September as its gas levy cannot yet be imposed on all consumers, including those with fixed prices contracts, government and parliamentary sources told Reuters on Wednesday. A gas levy, which had been set to come into force from October, was envisaged as a tool to collect funds from all gas consumers to support ailing gas importers that are struggling with soaring prices due to falling Russian gas export flows.