To deliver on the Clean Industrial Deal, Europe needs affordable energy. A set of concrete short-term and structural measures will provide competitiveness, affordability, security and sustainability for citizens and businesses. Energy is a building block and a driving force of our Union, and an area where most actions to mitigate climate change can be taken. However, high energy costs are hurting EU citizens and businesses. Energy poverty affects more than 46 million Europeans and electricity is about 3 times more expensive than...

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The Commission will allocate €1.3 billion for the deployment of critical technologies that are strategically important for the future of Europe and the continent's tech sovereignty through the Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) work programme for 2025 to 2027 adopted today. The work programme focuses on the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its uptake by businesses and public administration, cloud and data, cyber resilience and digital skills. More specifically, key priorities under the DIGITAL work programme include: Improving the availability and accessibility of generative...

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Blog post by Antonin Bergeaud, Guzmán González-Torres Fernández, Vincent Labhard and Richard Sellner We constantly hear of exciting new ways AI tools can help to tackle economic problems and the productivity gains they bring. However, benefits can only materialize when firms actually use AI. This post is part of a miniseries related to the ECB conference “The Transformative Power of AI”, on 1-2 April 2025, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Learn more here. Though economists have attempted to quantify the potential economy-wide productivity...

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Good afternoon everyone. On Tuesday, we will mark 100 days since the College of Commissioners took office. 100 days since 1 December that feel like a lifetime ago. The world around us is changing at lightning speed. Geopolitical shifts are shaking alliances. Decades-old certainties are crumbling. And we still have a brutal war raging at our borders. Despite these turbulent times, this Commission has hit the ground running. From day one, we stayed the course that we had laid out...

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The Council adopted today a regulation on financial benchmarks with the aim of reducing red tape for EU companies, particularly SMEs. Benchmarks are widely used by companies and investors in the EU as references in their financial instruments or contracts. This legislation amends a regulation from 2016 regarding the scope of the rules for benchmarks, the use of benchmarks provided by administrators located in third countries, and certain reporting requirements. Main elements of the amended benchmarks regulation Reduced regulatory burden on administrators of benchmarks...

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AI adoption requires enormous amounts of electricity. And so does greening the economy. Are the digital and green transitions clashing or can they be successfully achieved together? The ECB Blog takes a closer look. This post is part of a miniseries related to the ECB conference “The Transformative Power of AI”, on 1-2 April 2025, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Learn more here. Two of the biggest economic challenges Europe faces are the digital and the green transitions. The former seeks...

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EU leaders discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, competitiveness, European defence, the next MFF, migration, oceans, multilateralism and the Western Balkans. António Guterres, UN Secretary-General, was invited to a working lunch. A Euro Summit in inclusive format was held on the margins of the meeting. European Council conclusions, 20 March 2025 Remarks by President António Costa at the press conference following the European Council meeting of 20 March 2025 Euro Summit, 20 March 2025 The text on Ukraine was firmly supported by 26...

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The European Commission has adopted its strategy for the savings and investments union (SIU), a key initiative to improve the way the EU financial system channels savings to productive investments. It seeks to offer EU citizens broader access to capital markets and better financing options for companies. This can foster citizens’ wealth, while boosting EU economic growth and competitiveness. The savings and investments union is a horizontal enabler that will create a financing ecosystem to benefit investments in the EU’s strategic objectives. As highlighted in...

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Washington, DC: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released the seventh edition of the Integrated Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM7, the Manual) (https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Data/Statistics/BPM6/draft-bpm7-wcv.ashx). This new edition provides updated global standards for compiling external sector statistics, including balance of payments and integrated international investment position. It highlights key changes in the global economy, such as the increasing economic interconnectedness, digitalization, and innovations in financial markets since the time of the last update of the manual in 2009. The launch of BPM7 marks the...

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