Europe

The European Commission approved a €5.4 billion ($6.1 billion) state bailout of Italy’s Monte dei Paschi bank on Tuesday, allowing the Italian government to recapitalize and restructure the troubled lender. The gereen light came after the in-principle accord reached on June 1 by Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan and Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

The European Union’s executive arm said in a statement that it had approved the capital injection into Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, or MPS, under the bloc’s state aid and bank resolution rules after the lender agreed to undergo a drastic restructuring.

The International Monetary Fund, a key creditor in Greece’s bailout, will not participate in any further rescues of the debt-wracked country, Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told a Greek newspaper today.

“We have all acknowledged (eurozone and IMF) that the third Greek (bailout) payment will be the last with the participation of the IMF,” Schaeuble told Greek daily Ta Nea.

Germany’s financial hub, Frankfurt, is trying to attract its share of the Brexit-driven banker exodus from London by appealing to "risk takers" working in the financial sector.

The UK is widely expected to lose financial passporting rights after its EU exit, which would represent a huge blow to its financial services industry. The EU’s passporting rules allow businesses to sell services across the union from anywhere within it and only require companies to be regulated in one country, rather than everywhere they operate.

Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders restarted negotiations on Wednesday for the island’s reunification. Cyprus is divided for the last 43 years, following an invasion by Turkey in 1974, triggered by a coup backed by the Greek Colonel’s regime.
Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci met in the Swiss Alpine resort of Crans-Montana, joined by senior U.N. and European Union officials and the foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey.

The conference brings all the main players to the table – including representatives from Cyprus’ guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey and Britain – in what is being billed as an arena “for big and lasting decisions”.

The European Union faces a 20-billion-euro hole in its annual budget due to Britain’s withdrawal and rising costs in issues such as defense, EU Budget Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said Wednesday.

Oettinger warned that the U.K.’s departure, expected in 2019, will blow a hole of €9 billion to €12 billion in the EU’s roughly €150 billion annual budget.

“We won’t have the UK with us any more, but they were net payers despite the Thatcher rebate, so we will have a gap of 10 to 11 billion euros a year,” Oettinger told a press conference as he unveiled the commission’s proposals for the budget.

Talks about a new treaty governing the European Union’s relationship with Switzerland have collapsed over the same issue bedevilling Brexit – the European Court of Justice.

Switzerland, which is not a member of the EU, has more than 100 bilateral agreements with Brussels overseeing ties including transport, trade and education, but the EU is demanding a single framework treaty.

A new treaty could clear the way for closer ties in fields including financial services and power markets, but fear that any deal might upset Swiss voters under the country’s system of direct democracy has put the project on hold.

Ransomware known as Petya seems to have re-emerged to affect computer systems across Europe, causing issues primarily in Ukraine, Russia, England and India, a Swiss government information technology agency said on Tuesday.

"There have been indications of late that Petya is in circulation again, exploiting the SMB (Server Message Block) vulnerability," the Swiss Reporting and Analysis Centre for Information Assurance (MELANI) said in an e-mail.
It said it had no information that Swiss companies had been impacted, but said it was following the situation. The Petya virus was blamed for disrupting systems in 2016.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May promised EU citizens now living in Britain they could stay after Brexit but started a dispute with Brussels over the role of Europe’s top court.

At a summit in Brussels on Thursday, May gave "a clear commitment that no EU citizen currently in the UK lawfully will be asked to leave the country at the point that the UK leaves the EU", a British government source said.