European Union

Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of euro zone finance ministers, said Thursday that the International Monetary Fund may refuse the next portion of aid to Greece due next month.

The report impacted the markets where European stocks declined and secure bond futures surged up.

Juncker's spokesman later clarified that if European and IMF inspectors were convinced by new Greek austerity measures, there would be no problem with the June aid tranche.

Blocking online sales of products are breaching European Union laws, according to the opinion written by Ján Mazák, Advocate General at the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

Mazák gave his opinion on a case involving cosmetic products, saying that Pierre-Fabre's absolute refusal to allow its French distributors to sell its products on the Internet is "disproportionate."

A new report from the organization European Digital Rights (EDRI) revealed that an increasing number of European Union member states are delegating online policing to private sector companies and Internet service providers, provoking anger and concerns of the latter.

If previously it was law enforcement agencies who addressed the problem of illegal online content, now more powers are given to ISPs so that the industry would regulate itself independently. The trend is likely to be implemented widely with increasing "extra-judicial sanctions" against consumers.

Common measures should be worked out by European governments to address the stability of the euro zone, urges EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn, as cited by the German newspaper Die Welt.

"We must agree on common measures as soon as possible - the sooner the better," he told Die Welt. "The calming on markets in the last few weeks has given us a bit of breathing space, but there is no reason to lean back now, we must now act with the necessary determination."

The European common currency that traded lower in Asian session reversed its direction ahead of the outcome of European Union finance ministers meeting in Brussels.

The euro that tested yesterday's 4-day low of 109.59 against the Japanese yen in early Asian deals reversed direction in late trading and reached as high as 110.23 around 2:20 am ET. The euro-yen pair leveled off shortly and is currently quoted at 110.20 with 110.60 seen as the next probable resistance level.

Jean-Claude Trichet, President of European Central Bank, called upon Ireland and Greece to keep to their commitments they made in return for financial help and said a broader European safety fund should be beefed up.

Trichet made his comments addressing a French talk show on the eve of a regular meeting of euro zone finance ministers which was set to discuss an increase in the effective lending capacity of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).

All 16 euro zone countries along with any other European Union members should coordinate their economic policies more closely in the futures, France Economy Minister Christine Lagarde told a German newspaper.

"The crisis showed us that it is not sufficient to limit public debt as foreseen in the Maastricht Treaty. Ireland stuck to these criteria and finds itself nevertheless in difficulty," Lagarde said in an interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

IBM is establishing a consortium in association with the European Union and a number of universities to conduct a research into new cloud-computing models in a move to reduce costs for hosting and maintaining Internet-based services.

The GAIM hedge fund conference conducted on Thursday brought no optimism to the attendants who left the meeting with much to worry about.

According to Credit Suisse/Tremont hedge funds suffered 2.3% losses in May which whittled down the gains achieved in the previous year. This raises fears of an extended period of turbulence. The losses were the biggest since November 2008, near the nadir of the credit crisis, according to Hedge Fund Research.

One of the most stable investment projects IncoForex has come with new statement. “The previous week the entire financial world was bullied by the crisis with the euro zone. Of course, IncoForex's traders had also some fears, as they actively trade in the euro zone,” says the statement.

This week UK lawmakers called for developing global regulation the cyber space which is believed to ensure best security of the European Internet.

Apart from creating global regulation a committee of parliament's upper chamber called for creating a common European-wide approach.

The absence of any worldwide regulation of the Internet results in a multiple abuses from small-scale theft and identity fraud to espionage and mass attacks that shut down a business or utility.

Jim Rogers, a prominent expatriate American investor and financial commentator, said on Wednesday that the euro and the pound are unlikely to exist as currencies over the long term.

"The euro will probably break up in the next 15 to 20 years," Rogers said in an interview. "Don't get me wrong, I own the euro."

 European Union regulators said Wednesday they were preparing to settle a long and costly antitrust battle with Microsoft Corp. with a deal to give Windows users a choice of web browsers.

Microsoft promised the changes after the EU charged it with monopoly abuse for tying the Internet Explorer browser to the Windows operating system installed on most of the world's desktop computers.

 On Thursday it was reported that 22 largest banks in the European Union successfully passed stress test by financial supervisors who confirmed that they are stable enough to withstand future economy worsening.

Besides, European Union finance ministers and central bankers stated that the banks will likely have an extra $581.5 billion in losses this year and next year, if economic output fell below recent forecasts, and still none of the banks is expected to go under.

 European Union is introducing new rules governing the volume of music players. Under the new set of regulation the default max volume will be much lower than it is at present time.

Thereby, the new policy will require iPods and other MP3 players to have a default maximum volume of 80 decibels. According to many sound rankings this level is o\considered as “very loud” and anything above it is believed to be potentially dangerous. Before the new standard MP3 players were as loud as 115 to 125 decibels.