Brussels, 13 May 2015 – Further policy is needed to return to self-sustaining growth. The European Commission today adopted country-specific economic policy recommendations for 2015 and 2016 asking for national actions to create jobs and stimulate growth. These recommendations reflect the Commission’s economic and social agenda. Since President Juncker’s Commission took office in November 2014 and published its Annual Growth Survey 2015, this agenda has focused on three mutually reinforcing pillars: boosting investment, implementing structural reforms and pursuing fiscal responsibility. The successful...

Improving Europe's capacity to innovate and be globally competitive requires further efforts to encourage disruptive ideas and foster their commercial up-take. These are some of the conclusions to be drawn from the latest ranking of innovation performance across Europe. The European Commission's Innovation Union Scoreboard 2015 reveals that the EU’s overall level of innovation has remained stable. However, the crisis has left an impact on the private sector's innovative activity: the number of innovative firms is in decline, as are...

The Internet and digital technologies are transforming our world – in every walk of life and in every line of business. Europe must embrace the digital revolution and open up digital opportunities for people and businesses. How? By using the power of the EU's Single Market. Today, the European Commission unveiled its detailed plans to create a Digital Single Market, thereby delivering on one of its top priorities. At present, barriers online mean citizens miss out on goods and services:...

Brussels, 05 May 2015 -- Economic growth in the European Union is benefitting from positive economic tailwinds. According to the European Commission's Spring 2015 Economic Forecast, these short-term factors are boosting an otherwise mild cyclical upswing in the EU. Europe’s economies are benefitting from many supporting factors at once. Oil prices remain relatively low, global growth is steady, the euro has continued to depreciate, and economic policies in the EU are supportive. On the monetary side, quantitative easing by the European...

-- Loans will support trade and investment of SMEs in Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced the creation of two facilities that will finance the international expansion of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) from Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. EIB President Werner Hoyer and IDB President Luis Alberto Moreno signed a document in Cologne to formalize the agreement. Financing for the IDB’s Internationalization of SMEs Financing Facility will...