Author: staff

Mortgage rates have continued to climb across the eurozone’s four biggest economies since August, although the effect of the European Central Bank’s latest interest-rate increase varies significantly between countries. Quoted fixed rates now range from around 2.2% in Spain to an average of 4.46% in Germany, although the figures cover different mortgage terms and are therefore not directly comparable. The ECB’s latest increase was largely priced into mortgage offers before it was announced, brokers said. Banks in France, Italy and Spain had already anticipated the decision, while German mortgage rates continued to follow 10-year government bond yields more closely. The…

There are probably more glamourous ways to begin a luxurious Nordic adventure than boarding a crammed Ryanair flight at London Stansted, but that’s exactly how this adventure started – a once in a lifetime tour for two weeks. My sister Nyeema and I were fairly certain they had squeezed a few more seats onto the aircraft since either of us last flew with them. But there we were, two British sisters embarking on a girls-only holiday that would take us through Greenland, Iceland and Norway – from the decidedly and deliberately non-luxurious to the seriously expensive, with an extraordinary amount…

Published on 11/09/2026 – 11:11 GMT+2 The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) is preparing to call for a rebalancing of relations with China that stops short of open confrontation or full decoupling. In the upcoming paper, senior EPP lawmakers are set to argue for a general rebalancing of economic relations by making fuller use of the bloc’s existing economic leverage tools, stopping short of a full escalation, according to the early contents seen by Euronews. The EPP is the largest and most influential political family at EU level, commanding the largest number of MEPs in the European Parliament and 14…

Published on 11/09/2026 – 13:10 GMT+2•Updated 13:11 The chief of staff to the Spanish government’s delegate in Ceuta, Gonzalo Sanz, has resigned from his position, the latest episode in an ongoing controversy over what Spanish authorities may have known ahead of the mass arrival of migrants into the North African exclave in late July. The resignation has not yet been officially confirmed by sources at the Government Delegation. Sanz said he received a warning from the National Intelligence Centre (CNI) on 29 July, in which he was alerted to messages circulating on social media in groups with a combined 180,000…

Despite public declarations that economic ties with Russia will be severed, Europe has paid an estimated €7.28 billion for liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Moscow’s Arctic Yamal project in just over eight months this year, already surpassing the €7.3 billion spent in all of 2025. The figures were revealed by an investigation by Urgewald, an NGO that exposes the financial institutions and companies backing climate-damaging projects. During the first eight months of 2026, European ports received 156 Yamal LNG cargoes carrying 11.39 million tonnes, compared with 142 cargoes and 10.34 million tonnes between January and August 2025 – an increase…

As a disastrous summer of droughts and wildfires turns into fall, some countries are grabbing the opportunity to convince counterparts to keep spending billions on farmers in the EU’s next long-term budget. While some nations have called for reducing spending on “traditional” topics like cohesion and agriculture, ministers like Fernandes argue it’s not just about paying farmers, but adapting the food system and the countryside to more extreme weather. “A lot of people don’t know that 42% of the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) is for environmental objectives,” said Fernandes. “The best friends of the environment are the farmers.” The summer…

On the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, former US Ambassador to the European Union Anthony Gardner says “diplomatic, financial and economic” means are also needed to fight terrorism. Gardner pointed out that 9/11 showed the world the power of “asymmetric warfare” and the damage “a small but determined radicalised group of terrorists can do” against “a much bigger power”. Gardner also insists that “AI is going to make asymmetric warfare even more relevant.”

A case in point is that OpenAI agents hacked a German website back in May to use it as a messaging board, Reuters reported last week. OpenAI had not publicly announced the incident and responded to the Reuters reporting on X saying: “We and the larger AI community do not yet have a clear standard for how to report misalignment that shows up during training, evaluation, and deployment.”   “[Reporting] timelines are going to need to be dramatically shortened [for incidents], and so we need much better continuous monitoring capabilities,” said Imogen Stead, AI policy manager at London-based think tank…

Published on 11/09/2026 – 14:31 GMT+2 The European Commission transmitted the EU-India trade deal, clinched last January, to EU member states for ratification on Friday – but only in English, despite opposition from France. The EU executive wants to fast-track the ratification process for trade deals by skipping the translation of agreements into the bloc’s 24 official languages. “When President von der Leyen went to India in January to conclude negotiations for this landmark trade agreement, she made a commitment to try to get it over the line within this calendar year,” Commission Deputy Chief Spokesperson Olof Gill said on…

For two days, Astana Finance Days 2026 brought together representatives of global financial institutions that collectively manage more than $26 trillion in assets, as Kazakhstan seeks to strengthen its position in the global competition for capital. The forum is organised by the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC), which was launched in 2018 and operates as a separate financial jurisdiction in Kazakhstan with its own regulatory and legal framework based on the principles of English common law. The gathering included BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, alongside Goldman Sachs, Capital Group, Brookfield and other major financial institutions. Investors, policymakers and regulators…