Today, the European Commission has presented a Single Market Strategy to create a more simple, seamless and strong European home market. The Strategy sets out bold actions to reduce existing barriers holding back intra-EU trade and investments, helps SMEs to operate and scale up their activities, and alleviates businesses by boosting digitalisation. The Strategy calls on Member States to do their part in making the EU market the best choice for companies, workers and consumers. In today's world, marked by economic volatility...

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Policymakers should broaden central clearing and monitor market-making, including by nonbank financial institutions, while dealers must continue to build resilience Blog post by Tobias Adrian, Kleopatra Nikolaou, Jason Wu | The smooth functioning of government bond markets is important for the safety and soundness of broader capital markets, especially amid heightened financial market volatility. Bond markets recently adjusted sharply to an abrupt re-assessment of the global macroeconomic environment and elevated trade policy uncertainty. Government bond market functioning demonstrated resilience despite very high volatility,...

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“Check against delivery” Minister Cuerpo, Commissioner Serafin, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a pleasure to be here with you today, in the company of so many distinguished thinkers and experts. Jacques Delors famously said that no one falls in love with a Single Market. And at the start of my first mandate, I thought that must also be true of our budget. But in these years, I have learnt that our budget is much more than a set of funds and rules. Because...

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Opening Remarks by Alfred Kammer, IMF European Department Director, for the Annual EU Budget Conference Thank you for the opportunity to join this important discussion today on the EU budget. Europe stands at a transformative crossroads. The global environment is increasingly complex, and structural changes are reshaping the foundations of European economies. The challenges before us are significant: strengthening productivity and resilience amid demographic aging and rising geopolitical and trade tensions while increasing defense spending in a fiscally sustainable way, and...

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Prepared by Maurizio Michael Habib, Oscar Schwartz Blicke, Emilio Siciliano and Jonas Wendelborn Gold prices have seen an unprecedented surge since 2023, reaching a series of all-time highs. Gold has a long history as a store of value. Given its limited industrial use, demand for gold comes traditionally from retail customers (e.g. for jewellery), although it is also employed as an investment asset and used by central banks as a reserve asset. From an investment perspective, gold differs from other asset classes....

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The EU economy began 2025 on a somewhat stronger footing than anticipated. It is projected to keep growing at a modest rate this year, with growth expected to pick up in 2026, despite heightened global policy uncertainty and trade tensions.  The Commission's Spring 2025 Economic Forecast projects real GDP to grow by 1.1% in 2025 in the EU and 0.9% in the euro area, broadly the same pace as recorded in 2024. In 2026, growth is expected to accelerate to...

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