The European Environment Agency (EEA) highlights the urgent need for monitoring antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in surface waters to better assess health risks. While antibiotics and resistant bacteria occur naturally, human and veterinary antibiotic use, discharges from wastewater treatment, pharmaceuticals, and agricultural waste accelerate the spread of resistance into aquatic environments. Natural water bodies can act […]

Anneli Tuominen addressed the growing importance of banks’ resilience to hybrid threats, noting that what were once considered “tail risks” are now part of the baseline. Hybrid threats—deliberate, coordinated actions often sponsored by autocratic states—include cyberattacks, economic coercion, disinformation, and other methods designed to destabilize democratic societies. Banks, as critical components of open economic systems, […]

The European Central Bank (ECB) has appointed Patrick Amis, Korbinian Ibel, and Thijs van Woerden as Directors General for banking supervision. They will assume their new roles on 1 March 2026:

The euro area current account recorded a €23 billion surplus in September 2025, up from €22 billion in August. Surpluses were driven by goods (€30 billion) and services (€12 billion), partially offset by deficits in secondary income (€17 billion) and primary income (€3 billion).

At the 2025 EBA Policy Research Workshop in Paris, Claudia Buch, Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB, underscored the importance of resilient banks for sustaining Europe’s economic growth. Reflecting on the evolution of capital regulation since the 2008 global financial crisis, Buch highlighted how reforms have strengthened the banking sector while maintaining support […]

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has introduced an updated SME hub on its website to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) meet their obligations under EU chemicals legislation, highlighting SME support as a core task of the Agency.

The European Environment Agency (EEA) reports that environmental factors such as air pollution, extreme temperatures, transport noise, and exposure to harmful chemicals contribute to about one in five cardiovascular deaths in the EU. These deaths are potentially preventable through effective environmental policies.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has updated its wage tracker, covering active collective bargaining agreements in eight euro area countries, with data up to early October 2025 and extending the forward-looking horizon to September 2026. Preliminary readings for the first three quarters of 2026 indicate slower and more stable wage growth, with employee coverage remaining […]

Isabel Schnabel, ECB Executive Board member, outlined the Eurosystem’s ongoing quantitative normalisation and future balance sheet strategy at the 2025 ECB Conference on Money Markets. She emphasized that the gradual reduction of monetary policy bond portfolios since March 2023 has been smooth, with banks maintaining strong liquidity and excess reserves. Schnabel clarified that the process […]

The European Central Bank (ECB) has imposed periodic penalty payments totaling €187,650 on ABANCA Corporación Bancaria, S.A. for failing to properly assess and document the materiality of its climate-related and environmental (C&E) risks. The ECB’s decision of 1 December 2023 required ABANCA to strengthen its identification of material C&E risks and set a compliance deadline […]