Today, the European Commission is revising the EU's cohesion policy to better support EU competitiveness and decarbonisation, defence and security, the Eastern border regions as well as affordable housing, water resilience, and the energy transition. The objective of this initiative is to make cohesion policy more effective, by encouraging Member States and regions to invest in the European strategic priorities, while maintaining the focus of cohesion policy on reducing economic, social and territorial disparities. Member States will be invited to...

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Welcome address by Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, at the ECB conference on “The transformative power of AI: economic implications and challenges” in Frankfurt, Germany. It is a pleasure to welcome you to our conference on the transformative power of AI. In the early stages of a new technological breakthrough, it is often hard to discern fact from fiction. We struggle to imagine the ways in which the new technology will be used. And even if we predict the direction...

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"Check against delivery" Madam President, dear Roberta, Mr President of the European Council, dear António, Honourable Members, Today, I would like to focus on the threats to global prosperity and stability and the rise of protectionism. And as our domestic agenda cannot be seen separately from global developments around us, let me start with the US tariffs. When the dream of a united Europe began, it started with a simple idea: Let us create one Single Market. Let us break barriers and take tariffs...

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Transactions Include Seventh Make More in America Deal, Highlighting Bank Support of Domestic Critical Minerals Supply Chain Washington, D.C. – The Board of Directors of the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) last week approved three transactions amounting to more than $350 million in financing to support domestic exports and Bank priorities. The first transaction of the day was an $11 million loan for IperionX Technology LLC to support the purchase and installation of industrial metals processing equipment. This transaction is...

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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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