EU health ministers have set out the Council’s position on a regulation to modernise and simplify the structure of the fees payable to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to better reflect the evolving demands and challenges it faces. The general approach approved today will enable the Council to start negotiations with the European Parliament. The European Medicines Agency and national competent authorities play vital roles in protecting and promoting public and animal health. Today EU health ministers endorsed an approach...

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The Council today took a decisive step towards a modernisation of the EU’s rulebook for asylum and migration. It agreed on a negotiating position on the asylum procedure regulation and on the asylum and migration management regulation. This position will form the basis of negotiations by the Council presidency with the European Parliament. No member state can deal with the challenges of migration alone. Frontline countries need our solidarity. And all member states must be able to rely on the...

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Contribution by Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the ECB, at Seminar on the Capital Requirements Regulation and Directive (CRR/CRD) | Madrid, 9 June 2023 | CRR3/CRD6: key last step to fully leverage on the lessons learned from the global financial crisis It is a great pleasure to take part in this seminar about the outstanding Basel III reforms in Europe. These rules have been developed and agreed upon at international level by central banks and bank supervisors, in response to the lessons...

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Humanity needs nature to survive, and so do the economy and banks. The more species become extinct, the less diverse are the ecosystems on which we rely. This presents a growing financial risk that cannot be ignored, warns Frank Elderson, member of the Executive Board of the ECB and Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB. A thriving nature provides many benefits that sustain human well-being and the global economy. Think of fertile soils, pollination, timber, fishing stocks, clean...

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Unemployment has declined since the peak of the pandemic in August 2020, hitting a record low this April. But while more people have jobs, they are working fewer hours on average. In this post for The ECB Blog we shed light on this dichotomy and why it matters for the overall strength of the labour market. One could look at the euro area labour market and see a success story. After an initial drop at the beginning of the pandemic,...

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Keynote speech by Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the ECB, at the Annual Joint Conference of the European Commission and the European Central Bank on European Financial Integration | Brussels, 7 June 2023 | It is a great pleasure to be participating in this year’s joint conference on financial integration. This event offers an excellent opportunity to reflect on key developments in the financial sector over the past year and to reassess priorities for advancing the integration, development and safety...

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Today, the European Commission and the World Health Organization (WHO) have announced the launch of a landmark digital health partnership. In June 2023, WHO will take up the European Union (EU) system of digital COVID-19 certification to establish a global system that will help facilitate global mobility and protect citizens across the world from on-going and future health threats. This is the first building block of the WHO Global Digital Health Certification Network (GDHCN) that will develop a wide range...

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In 2020, the Commission´s nearly €100 billion SURE instrument designed to protect jobs and incomes affected by the COVID-19 pandemic supported about 31.5 million employees and self-employed people and over 2.5 million businesses. SURE effectively encouraged Member States to set up wide-ranging and ambitious short-time work schemes and similar measures at national level, which allowed firms to retain employees and skills, and supported the self-employed. Today's final bi-annual report on the implementation and impact of the SURE instrument shows that...

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Modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) models often work as opaque decision-making engines (black boxes); reaching conclusions without much transparency or explanations on how a given result is obtained. In an era where AI has become an integral part of our lives, where recruiters, healthcare providers, and other fields, rely on this tool to make decisions impacting individuals, understanding the way AI works is essential. Could Explainable Artificial Intelligence, or XAI, be a way forward, a potential solution? But, what is XAI,...

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