Today, the Council presidency and the European Parliament have reached a provisional agreement on a regulation aimed at addressing the negative trade-related effects of global overcapacity on the EU steel market. The regulation will introduce a new framework to protect the EU steel sector from global excess production and trade diversion, while ensuring that the measure remains compatible with the EU’s international trade obligations and sufficiently flexible for economic operators, including downstream industries. It will replace the current EU steel safeguard...

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Speech by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva at the 2026 Spring Meetings in Washington, DC Good morning. A resilient world economy is being tested again by the now-paused war in the Middle East. The conflict has caused considerable hardship around the globe. My heart goes out to all people affected by this war and all wars. When we welcome ministers and central bank governors to our Spring Meetings next week, our focus will be on how best to weather this latest shock and...

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Blog | Widening global current account imbalances are best addressed by simultaneous domestic policy adjustments. Industrial policy and tariffs offer a costly fix with unreliable effects on imbalances. Global current account imbalances are widening again, reversing a decade of steady decline following the global financial crisis. History suggests a clear risk: widening imbalances have often been accompanied by concentrated and lower-quality growth, triggered sectoral dislocations across trading partners, and preceded financial crises or abrupt reversals of capital flows. With the...

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