The financial industry is undergoing rapid technological change. Traditional banks face competition from online start-ups with no physical branches. Social media and other digital platforms are expanding into payments and credit. The increase in demand for digital services triggered by COVID-19 is turbo-charging this transformation. The confluence we are witnessing is driving fintech innovation and raises important questions. What are the transformative aspects of recent financial innovation that can uproot finance as we know it? Which new policy challenges...

Main results - Fisheries 2021 fishing opportunities Ministers agreed the catch limits for over 200 commercial fish stocks in the Atlantic, the North Sea, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea for 2021. More than 100 of these stocks in the Atlantic and North Sea have been co-managed with the UK during the last decades. Given the ongoing EU-UK negotiations on their future relationship, ministers agreed to set provisional quotas for the fish stocks shared with the UK. The provisional quotas are...

Following the European Parliament's consent yesterday, the Council has adopted the regulation laying down the EU's multiannual financial framework for 2021-2027. The regulation provides for a long-term budget of €1 074.3 billion for the EU27 in 2018 prices, including the integration of the European Development Fund. Together with the Next Generation EU recovery instrument of €750 billion, it will allow the EU to provide an unprecedented €1.8 trillion of funding over the coming years to support recovery from the COVID-19...

How will our economy evolve over the next few years? The ECB and Eurosystem staff produce quarterly macroeconomic projections. These aim to assess how the economy in the euro area will develop. Today we again published a baseline scenario as well as two alternative scenarios, taking into consideration the high uncertainty surrounding the impact of the coronavirus on the eurozone economic outlook Overview Following a drop of 15.0% in the first half of 2020, euro area real GDP rebounded by 12.5% in...

Today, the Commission and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy are presenting a new EU Cybersecurity Strategy. As a key component of Shaping Europe's Digital Future, the Recovery Plan for Europe  and the EU Security Union Strategy, the Strategy will bolster Europe's collective resilience against cyber threats and help to ensure that all citizens and businesses can fully benefit from trustworthy and reliable services and digital tools. Whether it is the connected devices, the electricity grid, or the...

New international standards on the automatic exchange of information for tax purposes have so far been satisfactorily implemented by countries worldwide, marking an important milestone in the global fight against tax evasion, according to a new report published today by the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (the Global Forum). The first Peer Review of the Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information shows that 88% of jurisdictions engaged in automatic exchange since 2017-18 were deemed to...