Juergen Baetz Posts

The inflation rate in the 18-nation eurozone dropped again in July, official data showed Thursday, in a worrying sign that adds pressure on the European Central Bank to beef up its efforts to spur the economy.

Russia on Monday granted Ukraine another week before it will start demanding prepayment for gas, without which it has threatened to cut off supplies. The announcement by Russia's state gas company Gazprom came at the outset of a second round of European Union-mediated talks aimed at resolving the two countries' dispute over gas prices and outstanding debt.

NATO is strengthening its military footprint along its eastern border immediately in response to Russia's aggression in Ukraine, the alliance's chief said Wednesday. "We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water and more readiness on the land," Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters in Brussels, declining to give exact troop figures.

The European Union's Parliament on Tuesday completed the biggest overhaul of the bloc's financial system since the introduction of the euro currency, passing laws to minimize the risk and cost posed by failing banks. Lawmakers signed off on the creation of a European authority with the power to unwind or restructure failing banks, as well as a system that will see banks' creditors — not governments — take losses first when lenders fail.

The European Union's top court on Tuesday dealt a blow to law-enforcement agencies' spying on phone and internet records, saying the lives of citizens should not be "the subject of constant surveillance." The European Court of Justice scrapped EU legislation allowing the indiscriminate collection of such communication data in crime-fighting efforts, ruling that the rules were too broad and offered too few privacy safeguards.

It will become more expensive for businesses in the European Union to burn fossil fuels this year after the 28-country bloc decided Wednesday to beef up its carbon trading system. The agreement ended a year of bickering over how to amend what is Europe's prime tool in the fight against climate change and the world's biggest emission trading system.

The backlash in Europe over U.S. spying is threatening an agreement that generates tens of billions of dollars in trans-Atlantic business every year — and negotiations on another pact worth many times more. A growing number of European officials are calling for the suspension of the "Safe Harbor" data-sharing agreement, which is vital to more than 4,200 American companies doing business in Europe, including Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon. It could force U.S. businesses to stop servicing European customers.

The European Union is pushing for a more stable financial system by clamping down on "shadow banking" — the high-finance sector that handles trillions of dollars but isn't bound by the same rules as banks.