IMF Blog post | Integrating and deepening banking and venture capital markets would boost output by at least 3 percent, and make business dynamism reforms more powerful French startup Mistral AI’s recent financing round was led by ASML, a Dutch maker of semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Such cross-border investments—even when small relative to US deals—are not the norm in Europe. Far more often, good projects fail to scale. Among the reasons: Europe’s considerable savings are compartmentalized within national borders, and hard...

Read more

The European Commission's first review of the Foreign Subsidies Regulation (FSR) has found that the regulation is fit for purpose to address distortions in the internal market caused by foreign subsidies. Its objective of maintaining a level playing field in the internal market is widely acknowledged and remains relevant. The review of the first three years of FSR enforcement shows the instrument is working well in practice. The procedures for reviewing concentrations and foreign financial contributions in public procurement procedures...

Read more

IMF F&D MAGAZINE article | Geopolitical rivalry does not end the need for trade cooperation, but the multilateral system must adapt For decades, the global economy rested on the premise that international trade was beneficial despite geopolitical differences. The rules of the multilateral trading system, established with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947 and embedded in the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, were crafted for a world where governments rarely used trade to achieve geopolitical...

Read more

The European Commission has presented a plan to address the risks and harness the opportunities of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) in cybersecurity. While the AI can improve security, it can also be misused to identify vulnerabilities, automate attacks, and significantly increase the scale and speed of cyber incidents. The new plan will bring together EU countries, industry, and EU-level organisations to strengthen the cybersecurity of our digital landscape against the vulnerabilities posed by advanced AI. Key actions Evaluating AI models: The AI Act requires advanced AI models...

Read more

Interview with Les Échos conducted by Guillaume Benoit and Christophe Jakubyszyn on 24 June 2026 On 11 June, the ECB raised its key interest rates. Do you still think that was the right decision, given that just ten days later Iran and the United States agreed a 60-day ceasefire? We are confident that we made the right choice. As early as April, a large majority of Governing Council members were already prepared to take a decision. But at that point we...

Read more

Across the OECD area, the share of science and engineering professionals reached 3.7% of the workforce in 2024; information and communication technology (ICT) professionals grew to 3.1%. R&D personnel in turn rose to almost 1.6%. The professional science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)  workforce has continued to grow across OECD and EU economies, according to the latest data from the Research and Innovation Careers Observatory (ReICO). The share of science and engineering (S&E) professionals rose from 3.2 to 3.7% of total employment across...

Read more