VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Japan needs to open up its beer market to European exports if Tokyo and Brussels are to agree one of the world's biggest free trade deals next year, according to an EU document prepared for the next round of talks in December.

The euro zone will need another year to reach even a modest level of economic growth, the European Commission said on Tuesday, calling on Germany to help as Chancellor Angela Merkel again rejected a spending spree.

Ukraine, Russia and the European Union signed a deal on Thursday on the resumption of Russian natural gas supplies to Ukraine for winter after several months of delay during the conflict in Ukraine.

The European Commission provisionally accepted the budgets of France and Italy, saying on Tuesday that no euro zone states had submitted deficit plans for next year that seriously breached EU rules for fiscal stability.

The incoming head of the EU executive, Jean-Claude Juncker, told the European Parliament on Wednesday that he would present his 300-billion-euro plan for investment to bolster growth and jobs by the end of this year.

Evaporating inflation and slowing growth have put financial markets into such a spin that they could inflict further damage on the world economy.

European companies in Russia warned on Tuesday they were being hurt by a Russian embargo on food imports as well as EU sanctions and risked being "sacrificed" in the standoff over Ukraine.

Lafarge (LAFP.PA) and Holcim (HOLN.VX) are about to request approval from the European Commission for their planned merger, Lafarge Chief Executive Bruno Lafont told reporters on Thursday.

European data privacy regulators on Thursday handed Google a package of guidelines to help it bring the way it collects and stores user data in line with EU law after six regulators opened investigations into the internet giant.

Germany and France will try to reconcile divergent visions of how to fix Europe's economy on Monday when Manuel Valls makes his first visit to Berlin as French prime minister and holds talks with Angela Merkel.

Greece's international creditors have no appetite for considering a haircut as a way to lighten its debt load, the head of the European Stability Mechanism, the euro zone's bailout fund organization, told Greek Sunday newspaper Realnews.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras announced cuts on Saturday to unpopular taxes introduced at the height of Greece's debt crisis, in a bid to show that over four years of austerity are finally nearing an end.

Google's handling of "right to be forgotten" requests from European citizens will come under fire from the continent's privacy watchdogs on Thursday, after the search engine restricted the removal of Internet links to European sites only.

Canada, following the lead of the United States and the European Union, on Monday relaxed official restrictions on using mobile devices in flight while maintaining a ban on transmitting information.

Dublin, Ireland-based medical startup Mainstay Medical raised €18M as it completed a listing in the Iris Stock Exchange (ISE) to fund the clinical trials for its product in the US and Europe next year.