The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s securities markets regulator, today publishes the second Trends, Risks and Vulnerabilities (TRV) Report of 2022. The Russian war on Ukraine against a backdrop of already-increasing inflation has profoundly impacted the risk environment of EU financial markets, with overall risks to ESMA’s remit remaining at its highest level. In the first half of 2022 financial markets saw faltering recoveries, increasing volatility and likelihood of market corrections. Separately, crypto-markets saw large falls in...

Major economies sharply increased support for the production and consumption of coal, oil and natural gas, with many countries struggling to balance longstanding pledges to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies with efforts to protect households from surging energy prices, according to analysis released today by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Energy Agency. New OECD and IEA data show that overall government support for fossil fuels in 51 countries worldwide almost doubled to 697.2 USD...

Speech by Isabel Schnabel, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium organised by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Jackson Hole, Wyoming | 27 August 2022 | The Great Moderation was a period of prosperity and broad macroeconomic stability. The volatility of both inflation and output declined, the length of economic expansions increased, and people in most economies experienced sustained improvements in their standards of living. There is broad agreement that better...

When people seek medical care or visit other sensitive locations, they may think their presence is confidential. Little do most consumers know that if they have their phones with them, their location – for example, at a women’s health clinic, a therapist’s office, an addiction treatment center, or a place of worship – may be collected by tech companies. From there, that uniquely personal data becomes yet another commodity bought and sold in the shadowy information marketplace. An FTC...

In parallel with the adoption of EU instruments in the area of civil and commercial law, the EU’s exclusive external competence to negotiate and conclude international conventions has also increased. As a result, the EU (represented by the Commission) has gradually replaced Member States internationally. Where the EU cannot be formally a Contracting Party to an international Convention (because the participation of regional/international organisations is not foreseen in the convention), the EU exercises its competence through its Member States. The...

The European Commission has found Italy's plan to enable the transfer of certain State guaranteed loans to a newly created platform managed by AMCO S.p.A. to be free of any State aid. The Commission found that, under the scheme, the Italian State will be remunerated in line with market conditions. It also found that the sale of the loans to the platform managed by AMCO as well as any potential new loans granted by it will be carried out on...

The European Commission published today the results of an external market study on the distribution practices of hotels in the EU. The market study was conducted in 2021 and covers the period between 2017 and 2021. It focused on a representative sample of six Member States (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Poland, Spain and Sweden). The study aimed to: obtain up-to-date facts on hotels' distribution practices, following up on a similar monitoring exercise carried out by the European Competition Network (ECN) in...