The European Commission and the United States announce that they have agreed in principle on a new Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework, which will foster trans-Atlantic data flows and address the concerns raised by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Schrems II decision of July 2020. The new Framework marks an unprecedented commitment on the U.S. side to implement reforms that will strengthen the privacy and civil liberties protections applicable to U.S. signals intelligence activities.  Under the...

Today, the European Council was joined by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. of the United States. The leaders discussed the coordinated and united response of the European Union and the United States to Russia's unprovoked and unjustified military aggression in Ukraine. They reviewed their ongoing efforts to impose economic costs on Russia and Belarus, as well as their readiness to adopt additional measures and to stop any attempts to circumvent sanctions. Leaders discussed the urgent needs caused by Russia’s aggression, committed to...

Following up rapidly on the REPowerEU Communication and the Versailles Declaration, the Commission has set out ideas today for collective European action to address the root causes of the problem in the gas market and ensure security of supply at reasonable prices for next winter and beyond. Leaders will continue the discussion on these options at this week's European Council. Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, said: “Global and European energy markets are going through turbulent times, particularly since the Russian...

Conventional wisdom on capital flows holds that foreign direct investment is for the long-term, while securities and other flows may be more volatile. However, as Olivier Blanchard and Julien Acalin showed, a large proportion of measured foreign direct investment can be flows going in and out of a country on their way to a final destination. What explains this? The answer is special purpose entities (SPEs). SPEs are legal entities set up to obtain specific advantages from a host economy, in...

The Council and the Parliament today reached a provisional political agreement on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to make the digital sector fairer and more competitive. Final technical work will make it possible to finalise the text in the coming days. The DMA defines clear rules for large online platforms. It aims to ensure that no large online platform that acts as a ‘gatekeeper’ for a large number of users abuses its position to the detriment of companies...

The implementation of the BEPS package to tackle international tax avoidance continues to progress, as the OECD releases the latest peer review report assessing the actions taken by jurisdictions to prevent tax treaty shopping and other forms of treaty abuse under Action 6 of the OECD/G20 BEPS Project. This peer review process, which includes data on tax treaties concluded by each of the 139 jurisdictions that were members of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS on 31 May 2021, was...

"Check against delivery" Good morning, it is a pleasure and an honour to be with you today, albeit virtually. Let me thank Professor Schleiter for the welcome and Professor Ruggeri for this interesting background, and of course Dr Garavoglia for organising this event. When I first received this invitation, back in December, circumstances were very different. The European economy was on a path of strong growth, supported by the rollout of our unprecedented recovery plan, Next Generation EU - which remains...

EU adopts fourth package of sanctions against Russia On 15 March 2022, the EU decided to impose a fourth package of economic and individual sanctions in response to Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. The new measures include a prohibition on: ● all transactions with certain state-owned enterprises ● the provision of credit rating services to any Russian person or entity ● new investments in the Russian energy sectorThe Council expanded the list of persons connected to Russia’s defense and industrial base, on whom...