On the occasion of the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development, the  European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced today a new type of guarantee agreement that will provide up to €5 billion to de-risk investments and expand EIB operations outside the European Union (EU). Today's guarantee has the potential to unlock up to €10 billion in funding for critical projects in clean energy, green infrastructure and access to finance for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in...

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Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, Philip R. Lane, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB Good afternoon, ECB Chief Economist Philip Lane and I welcome you to this press conference, on the occasion of the conclusion of the 2025 assessment of our monetary policy strategy. The Governing Council recently agreed on an updated monetary policy strategy statement. You can find this statement on our website, together with an explanatory overview note and the two occasional papers presenting the underlying analyses. I will start by putting this...

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Three ministers have put forward their candidacy to become president of the Eurogroup: Carlos Cuerpo, Minister for Economy, Trade and Business of Spain Paschal Donohoe, Minister for Finance of Ireland Rimantas Šadžius, Minister for Finance of Lithuania The election of the new president will take place at the next meeting of the Eurogroup on 7 July. The president is elected by a simple majority of the Eurogroup ministers, in line with the Treaty's Protocol 14 on the Eurogroup. If none of the...

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By Elena Banu, Johanne Evrard, Daniel Jonas Schmidt and Michael Wedow There is now an urgent need to channel retail savings into European capital markets in order to develop those markets and finance EU priorities. In this edition of the ECB Blog, we show that an EU savings standard could increase retail participation in the capital markets, benefiting savers, boosting investment in EU companies and supporting strategic priorities. There are over 50,000 retail investment funds in the EU, offering a vast...

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By Guillaume Chabert, Robert Powell Support for developing countries should focus on grants and highly concessional loans for poorest and helping the more advanced crowd in foreign investment and private finance The significant shocks that have buffeted the global economy over the past five years have weighed heaviest on low-income countries and fragile and conflict-affected states. The post-pandemic recovery in low-income countries has lagged emerging market economies, which began their revival in 2021, though with significant differences. Among low-income countries, defined as the 70...

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