Participants: Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, IMF & Gerry Rice, Director, Communications Department, IMF MR. RICE: Good morning, everyone. And welcome to this Press Briefing here, at the International Monetary Fund. Delighted to welcome you this morning, and we looked at this as an opportunity to give you the chance to ask some questions to the Managing Director of the IMF, Madam Christine Lagarde. Good morning, Madam Lagarde. MS. LAGARDE: Good morning, Gerry. MR. RICE: Who with us this morning. And also it's...

Read more

Today the Commission officially launched the EU Strategy for the Alpine Region (EUSALP), the fourth EU macro-regional strategy. More than70 million citizens will reap the benefits of a closer cooperation between regions and countries in terms of research and innovation, SME support, mobility, tourism, environmental protection and energy resources management. This macro-regional strategy concerns seven countries; five Member States - Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia - and two non-EU countries - Liechtenstein and Switzerland - overall involving 48 regions. Commissioner...

Read more

The European Commission has adopted today a legal act to create a simpler, more modern and integrated EU customs system to support cross-border trade and provide for more EU-wide cooperation in customs matters. It builds on the Union Customs Code adopted in 2013, which sets out detailed rules for twenty-first century customs processes. Customs services play a central role in policing the EU’s external borders and in facilitating trade. The customs union is the operational arm of much of the...

Read more

Today, as the European Data Protection Supervisor sent his recommendations to the EU co-legislators negotiating the final text of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), he launched a mobile app to compare the latest texts from the Commission, the Parliament and the Council more easily on tablets and smartphones. Giovanni Buttarelli, EDPS, said: “Privacy and data protection matter more than ever to people. For the first time in a generation the EU has an opportunity to modernise, harmonise and simplify...

Read more

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded the Article IV consultation1 with the Euro Area. The recovery is strengthening, driven by rising domestic demand and supported by lower oil prices, the ECB’s quantitative easing under the expanded asset purchase program, and a weaker euro. The improving sentiment, rising inflation expectations, and easing credit conditions suggest that the recovery is likely to continue in the near term. In this context, euro area GDP is expected to accelerate from...

Read more

Today the European Commission has put the final building blocks in place to kick-start investment in the real economy. A package of measures agreed today will ensure that the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) is up and running by early autumn 2015, keeping the ambitious timetable set by President Jean-Claude Juncker to implement the Investment Plan for Europe. The Commission has just published a Communication on the role of National Promotional Banks (NPBs) in supporting the Investment Plan for...

Read more

1. Recalling its conclusions of July 2011 and June 2013 and the Foreign Affairs Council discussion of January 2015 which endorsed the Climate Diplomacy Action Plan, the Council adopted the following conclusions: 2. Climate change, as underlined by the latest scientific findings by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is a decisive global challenge which, if not urgently managed, will put at risk not only the environment but also world economic prosperity, poverty reduction, sustainable development and, more broadly,...

Read more

1. The Communication "A Framework Strategy for a Resilient Energy Union with a Forward-Looking Climate Change Policy" of 25 February 2015 and the European Council Conclusions of 19-20 March 2015 recognised the importance of the external dimension of the Energy Union. The objectives of the Energy Union can only be met if the external and the internal dimensions of energy policy, in particular a fully functioning Internal Energy Market, are mutually reinforcing. 2. EU policy objectives defined in the EU...

Read more

The Eurogroup welcomes the successful completion of the relevant national procedures related to the decision to grant in principle a 3-year ESM stability support to Greece, and especially the recent swift legislative steps taken by the Greek parliament as a first step towards rebuilding trust.  Following a formal decision taken by the ESM Board of Governors, the institutions were entrusted with the task of swiftly negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) detailing the policy conditionality attached to the financial assistance...

Read more