Topic: Western Europe

Leaders of the Group of Eight major economies are making progress on addressing the two biggest threats to their economies - the euro zone crisis and very high oil prices, British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Saturday.

A "ring of defense" has to be built around eastern European neighbors Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia to help them cope with the fallout from a possible Greek exit from the euro zone, bankers said on Friday.

London prices have risen 45 per cent over the past three years, compared to only 15 per cent in Geneva, 17 per cent in Paris and 10 per cent in New York, making London ever more expensive (and desirable) than its western peers.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) expects the economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, as well as four countries in the Middle East and North Africa, to experience a "substantial" slowdown this year because of fallout from the euro zone crisis.

If Greece goes: An exit is likely to shatter faith in the eurozone’s integrity for ever. The Financial Times reports.

When Greece announced on Tuesday that it had made a €436 million bond payment to the hold-out investors who rejected the country's historic debt revamping deal in March, the decision came as no surprise. What’s news is where most of that money went. The NYT reports.

“Very little of the bail-out money so far has gone to the Greeks. It has all gone to the bankers,” one analyst tells CNBC.

European shares closed broadly lower on Wednesday as concerns around Greece's political and financial crisis sapped risk appetite and with strategists advising investors to buy defensive stocks.

A Greek exit from the euro zone would not make things better for the stricken country or for Europe, Thomas Mirow, the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), told CNBC.com in an interview.

European shares provisionally closed at their lowest level since the start of 2012, led by a fresh slide in euro zone banks, after attempts to form a government in Greece collapsed.

Huge protests in Madrid, firebombs hitting tax offices in Italy, and voters in Northern Germany showing their anger toward an incumbent leader. Just another weekend in euro land, where the chances of economic recovery and political agreement on how to get there appear less likely by the hour.

Walking through his high-ceilinged factory here, explaining the production of sheets of copper, M. Brian O’Shaughnessy comes across as a staunch advocate of manufacturing in America.

European shares ended in positive territory on Friday, after a late rally on the back of positive U.S. economic data erased earlier losses, although many investors remained concerned over the health of Spain's banks and Greece's political impasse.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's says that Greece's already highly speculative sovereign rating could slip further if the country's turbulent politics result in a loss of support from the IMF  or the euro zone.

The European Central Bank is indebted to the hilt and is beginning to look like one of the banks it has done so much to save, according to the author Satyajit Das.