On November 25, 2020, the European Commission approved a sixth contract under the EU Vaccines Strategy, this time with the pharmaceutical company Moderna. The contract provides for the initial purchase of 80 million doses on behalf of all EU Member States, plus an option to request up to a further 80 million doses, to be supplied once a vaccine has proven to be safe and effective against COVID-19. The contract with Moderna will enlarge the already broad portfolio of vaccines...

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Interview with Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the ECB, conducted by Petri Sajari on 24 November 2020 | What are the key risks for the euro area recovery at the moment? The fourth quarter of 2020 will be marked by the measures taken by euro area governments to deal with the new wave of coronavirus (COVID-19) infections that started after the summer. While these containment measures are generally not on the same scale as those taken in March or April, they...

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There is a great deal of anticipation on the markets and in general looking ahead to the ECB’s December meeting. What can we expect from it? We should expect what the President stated very clearly at the last press conference: that the ECB’s Governing Council will reassess the macroeconomic outlook and recalibrate its measures accordingly. The outlook for inflation has clearly deteriorated rather than improved over the past few months owing to the resurgence of the pandemic and the containment...

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Today, the European Commission approved a fifth contract with the European pharmaceutical company CureVac, which provides for the initial purchase of 225 million doses on behalf of all EU Member States, plus an option to request up to a further 180 million doses, to be supplied once a vaccine has proven to be safe and effective against COVID-19. Today's contract with CureVac enlarges the already broad portfolio of vaccines to be produced in Europe, including the contracts signed with AstraZeneca, Sanofi-GSK, Janssen Pharmaceutica...

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The European Commission has disbursed €14 billion to nine EU countries in the second installment of financial support to Member States under the SURE instrument. As part of today's operations, Croatia has received €510 million, Cyprus €250 million, Greece €2 billion, Italy an additional €6.5 billion, Latvia €120 million, Lithuania €300 million, Malta €120 million, Slovenia €200 million and Spain an additional €4 billion. This support, in the form of loans granted on favourable terms, will assist these Member States...

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