The Luxembourg government announced its investment in bitcoin. Finance Minister Gilles Roth himself announced the news during the presentation of the 2026 Budget to the Chamber of Deputies.

The measure makes the country the first in the eurozone to launch a new FSIL investment policy, approved by the government in July 2025. Regarding this, Treasury Director Bob Keiffer stated: “Recognizing the growing maturity of this new asset class and reaffirming Luxembourg’s leadership in digital finance, this investment reflects the country’s long-term vision.”

With this initiative, Luxembourg joins a handful of European countries that hold Bitcoin, “although most—such as Finland, Georgia, and the United Kingdom—did so following crime-related seizures. Only Georgia, outside the eurozone, holds 66 BTC as a sovereign investment.”

With this decision, which is viewed with caution by other eurozone countries, Luxembourg “thus strengthens its position as a European leader in the crypto and blockchain ecosystem.”

M.Pino

Source: cripto247

(Reference image: Kanchanara on Unsplash)

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La entrada Luxembourg is the first Eurozone country to invest in bitcoin apareció primero en Bitfinance.

When they reach retirement age, workers become dependent on the income represented by their pension. In the European Union countries, the highest allowance is in Luxembourg, where retirees receive €31,385. The lowest is in Bulgaria, where pensioners receive €3,611 annually.

The difference in amounts leaves open the door to debate about the quality of life of retirees, since in most cases they depend exclusively on their pension.

The most recent data from Eurostat and the OECD “show that this is a problem that knows no borders: the average pension in the EU was around €16,128 in 2022, which translates to €1,345 per month.”

Concentrating the data solely on the EU, as mentioned, the lowest pension is found in Bulgaria and the highest in Luxembourg, with allowances of €3,611 per year and €31,385 per year, respectively.

However, a broader analysis, including the candidate countries and those of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), shows that “Albania is the country with the lowest retirement pension in Europe, at just €1,648 per year (€137 per month), a huge difference of more than €38,000 compared to Iceland, where it is close to €36,000 per year (€2,997 per month), according to the latest Eurostat data.”

Norway and Denmark, on the other hand, have pensions above 30,000 euros. In Sweden and Finland, the annual payment is 22,436 and 21,085 euros, respectively.

Other countries also considered are Turkey, 2,942 euros per year; Bosnia and Herzegovina, 3,041 euros per year; Serbia, 3,486 euros per year; Montenegro, 3,962 euros per year.

M.Pino

Source: eleconomista

(Reference image source: Immo Wegmann on Unsplash)

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La entrada Pension payments remain a challenge for EU countries apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The fine issued by the European Union against Amazon for breach of the RGPD amounts to 746 million euros, becoming the highest registered to date for this type of infraction.

The sanction is the product of a collective legal management carried out by the Quadrature du net in 2018, when the French movement for privacy rights denounced the electronic commerce giant for irregular conduct in the handling of advertising. The Quadrature asserted that the US company directs advertising towards its users even though they have not given their full consent to do so.

It took three years for the corresponding bodies to manage and to study the complaint. When it seemed that it would be dismissed, the CNPD – the data protection authority of Luxembourg and the country where Amazon maintains its headquarters for Europe – issued a ruling in favor of the Quadrature.

With this ruling, the body in charge of supervising the activity of the company in the EU not only imposed the fine; it also demanded a review of the company’s advertising practices.

The decision has generated great commotion due to the amount that the fine represents, which exceeds by more than 600 million euros the one imposed on Google last year by about 99 million euros and was considered the highest one.

For Amazon, this sentence is very worrying and counterproductive, not only because of the exorbitant amount. It is also alarmed by the investigation process on the review of the company’s practices and behaviors, for which it plans to appeal the fine, arguing that there is no data breach or breach.

This was indicated by company representatives through a statement: “There has been no data breach, and no customer data has been exposed to any third party. These facts are indisputable. We totally disagree with the CNPD ruling, and we intend to appeal. The decision regarding how we show customers relevant advertising is based on subjective and unproven interpretations of European privacy law, and the proposed fine is totally disproportionate even with that interpretation.”

M. Rodríguez

Source: marketing4ecommerce.net

La entrada Amazon faces the highest fine ever issued by the European Union apareció primero en Bitfinance.

Angela Merkel is visiting the areas that have been devastated by the floods in Western Europe, considered the worst of the century, leaving about 183 fatalities, dozens of disappeared and innumerable material damage in Germany and Belgium.

For Merkel the floods are a “tragedy” and she promised government support for the affected municipalities. The chancellor indicated that she will create a special fund to attend to the damages, the cost of which could reach billions of dollars.

The German Chancellor was in Washington when the deadly floods occurred. Merkel arrived in the town of Schuld, located in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, considered one of the places most affected by the rains in western Germany, where the flooding of the Ahr river devastated the houses, trees and everything in its wake, leaving the streets littered with debris.

The waters began to recede in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia (RNW), passing into the southern region of Upper Bavaria, where heavy rains flooded basements and caused flooding of rivers and streams on Saturday night.

The extreme rains also affected Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, as rescue forces try to find survivors in the rubble.

M. Rodríguez

Source: elnacional.com

La entrada Germany allocates special fund to deal with floods apareció primero en Bitfinance.

The German Constitutional Court gave the green light to the European unitary patent after rejecting constitutional complaints against the project, which had slowed down the approval of the initiative in Germany.

The judicial entity determined that the plaintiffs did not sufficiently demonstrate that their fundamental rights were violated, therefore it dismissed the complaints.

The objective of the European Union (EU) unitary patent is to reduce the time and cost of registering an invention by allowing each patent applicant to file a single application for a unitary effect in a centralized way, without the need to validate it in each country of the block.

The EU unitary patent is expected to reduce the cost of registering an invention by as much as 32,000 euros ($ 39,000), according to figures from the European Commission.

Now there is nothing to prevent the President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, from promulgating the law approving the European unitary patent, which has already been approved by the Bundestag and the Bundesrat (Lower House and Upper House of Parliament, respectively) at the end of 2020.

With the unblocking of the project by Germany, which did not grant its consent for years due to unconstitutional appeals preceding the complaints dismissed today, the establishment of the Unified Patent Court, whose headquarters will be in Luxembourg, can proceed.

Source: dpa

La entrada Germany approves the European unitary patent apareció primero en Bitfinance.