Economy and finance ministers today welcomed the assessment of national recovery and resilience plans for Croatia, Cyprus, Lithuania and Slovenia. The Council will adopt its implementing decisions on the approval of these plans by written procedure shortly after the informal ministers’ meeting held today. Following the formal adoption of the decisions, this second batch of member states will be able to use the facility’s funds to foster their economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. All four member states requested pre-financing from their allocated...

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For the first time since the creation of the Innovation Fund, the European Union is investing €118 million into 32 small innovative projects located in 14 EU Member States, Iceland and Norway. The grants will support projects aiming to bring low-carbon technologies to the market in energy intensive industries, hydrogen, energy storage and renewable energy. In addition to these grants, 15 projects located in 10 EU Member States and Norway will benefit from project development assistance worth up to €4.4...

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Blog post by Fabio Panetta, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB | 27 July 2021 | With the complete reopening of the economy in sight, what Europe needs to emerge stronger from the pandemic will change. We will have to shift from offsetting lost income to adding new income, and from preserving productive capacity to reallocating capital and labour towards sectors with more favourable opportunities. Whether we will succeed depends on how we reform the way in which the...

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New digital forms of money have the potential to provide cheaper and faster payments, enhance financial inclusion, improve resilience and competition among payment providers, and facilitate cross-border transfers. But doing so is not straightforward. It requires significant investment as well as difficult policy choices, such as clarifying the role of the public and private sectors in providing and regulating digital forms of money. Some countries may be tempted by a shortcut: adopting cryptoassets as national currencies. Many are indeed secure, easy...

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Making Europe the first climate neutral continent in the world is our goal. On July 14, the European Commission adopted a broad set of proposals to make the EU’s climate, energy, transport, and taxation policies fit for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. These proposals aim to make all sectors of the EU’s economy fit to meet this challenge. They set the EU on a path to reach its climate targets...

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