-- 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...

Strasbourg, 28 April 2015 -- Today the European Commission set out a European Agenda on Security for the period 2015-2020 to support Member States' cooperation in tackling security threats and step up our common efforts in the fight against terrorism, organised crime and cybercrime. The Agenda sets out the concrete tools and measures which will be used in this joint work to ensure security and tackle these three most pressing threats more effectively. The recent terrorist attacks on Europe's people...

Speech by Vítor Constâncio, Vice-President of the ECB, at the joint conference organised by the European Commission and the European Central Bank “European Financial Integration and Stability”, 27 April 2015 Ladies and Gentlemen, The financial and sovereign crises have markedly changed our understanding of financial interactions in the Economic and Monetary Union. We have experienced how quickly apparent integration among Member States can unravel and how it can pose a threat to economic activity, job creation and price stability. The degree of...

Financial integration in the euro area has improved steadily and has reached a level close to that before the sovereign debt crisis Establishment of Banking Union and unconventional monetary policy actions taken by the ECB are major drivers of the improvement Financial integration is crucial for restoring efficient credit flows to the real economy Overall, financial integration in Europe has returned to a level close to that recorded before the sovereign debt crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) said today in a...

Brussels, 24 April 2015 -- The Neighbourhood Investment Facility brings additional investments in transport, energy and environment infrastructure, including climate change mitigation and adaptation, and to the development of social and private sectors in Eastern and Southern Partner Countries. The European Commission decided to contribute an additional EUR 295.04 million to the Facility in 2015 to enable more than EUR 3 billion in investments. The Neighbourhood Investment Facility (NIF) is an instrument which combines EU grants with other public and...