A solidarity loan of the German promotional bank KfW to the Italian promotional bank is intended to support liquidity aid for small and medium-sized enterprises in Italy which has been particularly hard hit by the Corona crisis. A volume of 1 billion euros would be a first step. This is the gist of a joint […]
ECON-Coordinators and Chair call for new ESM instrument for euro countries hit by corona crisis
Today a pro-European majority of the coordinators of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, together with the committee chairwoman, issued a press release on the European response to the economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus. MEPs call for stronger measures at European level than those agreed by euro finance ministers on Monday. In […]
Eurogroup on corona crisis: Ministers missed the opportunity to give a European response
Yesterday the finance ministers of the euro countries met in a video conference. On the agenda was the reaction of the euro countries to the economic impact of Covid-19 and the ministers did not reach any agreement on new collective or coordinated measures, only accepting the initiatives by the Commission, the EBA and the ECB, […]
New action plan to combat money laundering: EU Commission is sending the right signal but is falling behind expectations
In view of blatant shortcomings in the fight against criminal money, the European Commission is working on a new action plan on preventing money laundering and terrorist financing in the EU. While the release initially scheduled for 25 March could be postponed due to the Corona crisis, a leak of the Commission draft action plan […]
Coronavirus Crisis/Eurozone: Governments must commit to ESM credit lines without new austerity programmes
To cushion the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis, the ECB, the European Commission, and the German government among others have announced far-reaching monetary and fiscal policy measures. The ECB intends to support the real economy with favourable credit lines for banks and an expansion of the bond purchase programme. In addition, capital requirements for […]
Classification of sustainable investments: Expert group confirms exclusion of nuclear power
Today the EU Commission’s technical expert group (TEG) on Sustainable Finance published its final report on the classification of sustainable investments (taxonomy). The TEG confirms the exclusion of nuclear power from sustainable financial products on the basis of so-called ‘do-no-harm’ requirements. These are designed to ensure that an activity that contributes to one sustainability objective […]