Despite the tragic loss of life and immense challenges brought on by the pandemic, the US economy is making a remarkable recovery. The Biden administration’s proposed spending plans will add momentum, raising GDP by more than 5 percent from 2022 to 2024, and will create a lasting impact by increasing productivity and labor force participation. The economic impact of the American Jobs Plan (AJP) and American Families Plan (AFP) was the focus of the IMF’s annual economic and policy review...

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Economy and finance ministers today welcomed the assessment of national recovery and resilience plans for Croatia, Cyprus, Lithuania and Slovenia. The Council will adopt its implementing decisions on the approval of these plans by written procedure shortly after the informal ministers’ meeting held today. Following the formal adoption of the decisions, this second batch of member states will be able to use the facility’s funds to foster their economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. All four member states requested pre-financing from their allocated...

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For the first time since the creation of the Innovation Fund, the European Union is investing €118 million into 32 small innovative projects located in 14 EU Member States, Iceland and Norway. The grants will support projects aiming to bring low-carbon technologies to the market in energy intensive industries, hydrogen, energy storage and renewable energy. In addition to these grants, 15 projects located in 10 EU Member States and Norway will benefit from project development assistance worth up to €4.4...

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Blog post by Fabio Panetta, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB | 27 July 2021 | With the complete reopening of the economy in sight, what Europe needs to emerge stronger from the pandemic will change. We will have to shift from offsetting lost income to adding new income, and from preserving productive capacity to reallocating capital and labour towards sectors with more favourable opportunities. Whether we will succeed depends on how we reform the way in which the...

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New digital forms of money have the potential to provide cheaper and faster payments, enhance financial inclusion, improve resilience and competition among payment providers, and facilitate cross-border transfers. But doing so is not straightforward. It requires significant investment as well as difficult policy choices, such as clarifying the role of the public and private sectors in providing and regulating digital forms of money. Some countries may be tempted by a shortcut: adopting cryptoassets as national currencies. Many are indeed secure, easy...

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Making Europe the first climate neutral continent in the world is our goal. On July 14, the European Commission adopted a broad set of proposals to make the EU’s climate, energy, transport, and taxation policies fit for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. These proposals aim to make all sectors of the EU’s economy fit to meet this challenge. They set the EU on a path to reach its climate targets...

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EACC New York is inviting European countries, member states and non-member states, to share some fun facts about their country with the EACC network to showcase their home country’s cultural beauty, economic strengths, and their role in transatlantic trade & investment. Today, we present a profile for the REPUBLIC OF KOSOVO. A quick fun fact about your country: Kosovo is the newest and youngest country in Europe, with 70% of its population under the age of 35, and an average age of...

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The European Commission is in charge of ensuring that State aid granted by Member States complies with EU rules. At the heart of this responsibility lies the notification procedure, under which Member States have to notify any planned aid measures to the Commission before putting them into effect. Therefore, generally, aid measures can only be implemented after approval by the Commission. The General Block Exemption Regulation (“GBER”) introduces an important exception to the obligatory notification procedure. It declares specific categories...

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Climate action is gaining momentum. Since the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries have intensified climate action and many have committed to reach net zero emissions by 2050, meaning that any additional carbon emissions will be offset completely by carbon emissions withdrawn from the atmosphere. However, the carbon budget, or maximum amount of emissions allowable, to limit global warming to well below 2°C is running out quickly. More frequent and intense disasters, a decline in agricultural productivity, and rising sea levels will...

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Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the ECB | Frankfurt am Main, 22 July 2021 | Good afternoon, the Vice-President and I welcome you to our press conference. At today’s meeting, the Governing Council focused on two main topics: first, the implications of our strategy review for our forward guidance on the key ECB interest rates; and, second, our assessment of the economy and our pandemic measures. In our recent strategy review, we agreed a symmetric inflation...

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