Opening remarks by Philip R. Lane, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at MNI Market News Webcast | Frankfurt am Main, 17 February 2022 | In these brief opening remarks, I wish to discuss the forces shaping near-term and medium-term inflation dynamics. On near-term inflation, I emphasised in a blog post last week that the current high inflation rates have been largely shaped by a pandemic cycle that has generated global bottlenecks for manufactured goods over the last year...

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'With supply constraints likely to persist, the challenge for policymakers is to support recovery without allowing high inflation to become entrenched.' When countries asked people to stay at home to control COVID-19, consumers cut spending on services and bought more manufactured goods instead. The reopening of economies boosted manufacturing output, but renewed lockdowns and shortages of intermediate inputs from chemicals to microchips caused the factory recovery to stall. Prices of core consumer goods rose rapidly as delivery times reached...

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Today, the Commission is announcing an investment of over €110 million into LIFE programme integrated projects for environmental and climate protection, selected after a call for proposals covering the year 2020. The funding will support new major environmental and climate projects in 11 EU countries - Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia. The projects contribute to a green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and support the European Green Deal's objectives of making...

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By Kristalina Georgieva | 'We must work together to end the pandemic, navigate monetary tightening and shift focus to fiscal sustainability.' When the Group of Twenty finance ministers and central bank governors gather in Jakarta, in person and virtually, this week, they can take inspiration from the Indonesian phrase, gotong royong, “working together to achieve a common goal. This spirit is more important than ever as countries are facing a tough obstacle course this year. The good news is that the ...

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On February 15, 2022, the EU is acting on its space ambitions by tabling two initiatives - a proposal for a Regulation on a space-based secure connectivity and a Joint Communication on an EU approach on Space Traffic Management (STM). Space technology is essential for facilitating our daily lives, contributing to a more digital, green and resilient future for our planet. As a major space power, the EU's Space Programme already provides valuable data and services for a wide...

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By Kristalina Georgieva, IMF Managing Director | Atlantic Council, Washington, DC | Ladies and gentlemen, friends, Let me start by thanking the Atlantic Council for providing a fitting venue to discuss central banks’ forays into Digital Currencies. Since its founding in 1961, the Council has made important contributions to strategic, political, and economic policy debates. Those debates have served us well, helping us to test the boundaries of our thinking and be better prepared for what lies ahead. So, today, we aim to...

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Eswar S. Prasad explains how technology is transforming the nature of money and how that will affect our lives | In his latest book, The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance, the Cornell University professor describes how digital currencies and other financial technologies are reshaping everything from consumer banking to monetary policy and international payments. In a conversation with F&D’s Chris Wellisz, Prasad lays out the advantages and perils of the new forms of...

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The new European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA) today presents its first annual work plan, which will have a budget of €1.3 billion in 2022 to prevent, prepare for and rapidly respond to cross-border health emergencies. Following the adoption of the 2022 work plan by the HERA Board, HERA can now start implementing actions to strengthen preparedness and response capabilities within the EU, address vulnerabilities and strategic dependencies and contribute to reinforcing the global health emergency architecture. Announcing...

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After headline inflation had already reached very high levels in the United States in the first half of 2021, euro area inflation also recorded a very rapid increase in the second half of the year but remained much lower than in the United States. Comparing inflation developments in both economic areas could help to separate idiosyncratic factors from those related to the cyclical position, taking into account the fact that the euro area is lagging the US cycle. By...

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'Using an alternative measure may help separate the signal from the noise.' Economists debating inflation in the United States are confronting a difficult challenge: stripping out volatile price changes to gauge underlying pressures. The most common measure of underlying or “core” inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, has been hard to read during the pandemic. The traditional measure came into wider use in the 1970s, when volatile energy prices caused inflation spikes. Our research shows that...

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