The European Commission endorsed last week a positive preliminary assessment of 54 milestones and targets linked to Italy’s third payment request under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the key instrument at the heart of NextGenerationEU. On 30 December 2022, Italy submitted to the Commission a third payment request based on the milestones and targets set out in the Council Implementing Decision. After assessing the evidence provided by the Italian authorities, the Commission considered 39 milestones and 15 targets to be satisfactorily fulfilled. The 54 milestones and targets that have been satisfactorily fulfilled demonstrate significant progress in the implementation of Italy’s recovery and resilience plan. They cover wide-ranging transformative reforms in the areas of competition law, the justice system, public and tax administration, as well as education, the labour market and the healthcare system. The payment request also covers investments to foster the digital and green transition, and to improve support for research, innovation and education.
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The European Supervisory Authorities (EBA, EIOPA and ESMA – ESAs) has recently published their Progress Reports on Greenwashing in the financial sector. See EBA, EIOPA, and ESMA reports. In these reports, the ESAs put forward a common high-level understanding of greenwashing applicable to market participants across their respective remits – banking, insurance and pensions and financial markets. Continue reading…

In 2013, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) established the Official Sector Steering Group (OSSG) with the view of promoting the effective collaboration of the global official sector towards the end goal of successful transition to robust benchmarks, including the transition away from LIBOR. After a decade of preparation, the LIBOR transition has entered its final stage. The end of June 2023 marked the final major milestone in the LIBOR transition with the end of the remaining USD LIBOR panel. Only three of the US dollar LIBOR settings will continue in a synthetic form after June 2023 and are intended to cease at end-September 2024. In addition, reform of other interest rate benchmarks and related transition efforts have either been completed or near their planned, final conclusion. Continue reading…

The Commission welcomes the agreement made on 7 July at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) to revise its 2018 strategy on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships. The agreement is a milestone to cut the carbon footprint of international maritime transport and ensure that the shipping sector makes a fair contribution to achieving the Paris Agreement targets, commensurate to its 3% share of global emissions. Now that the agreement is reached, it is important to start implementation as soon as possible. Continue reading…

Eurojust and Europol have supported the competent authorities in Italy, Germany and Austria in a new operation against the ‘Ndrangheta criminal organisation. Among other crimes, the suspects were allegedly involved in the manipulation of elections in Italy. During a joint action day on 27 June, 34 suspects were arrested and nine were subjected to non-custodial measures. Over 1 000 officers participated in the actions on the ground. The investigation determined that the suspects had engaged in a wide variety of crimes, including the corruption of local politicians and the manipulation of elections, installing associates in crucial administrative positions, colluding in the exploitation of public procurement tender procedures, murder, violence, extortion, fraud, money laundering, illicit waste trafficking and criminal conspiracy with other criminal organisations.

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The European Commission has opened a formal investigation to assess whether Microsoft may have breached EU competition rules by tying or bundling its communication and collaboration product Teams to its popular suites for businesses Office 365 and Microsoft 365. Microsoft is a global technology company offering productivity and business software, cloud computing and personal computing. Teams is a cloud-based communication and collaboration tool. It offers functionalities such as messaging, calling, video meetings, file sharing and brings together Microsoft’s and third-party workplace tools and other applications. The coronavirus outbreak accelerated a shift to remote working as well as businesses’ transition to the cloud and the adoption of cloud-based software for communication and collaboration. The transition to the cloud has enabled the emergence of new market players and business models offering customers the ability to use multiple types of software from different providers, without the need to maintain an in-house data centre. Cloud-based software, including the products under investigation, are typically distributed on a subscription basis. Microsoft includes Teams in its well-entrenched cloud-based productivity suites for business customers Office 365 and Microsoft 365. The Commission is concerned that Microsoft may be abusing and defending its market position in productivity software by restricting competition in the European Economic Area (‘EEA’) for communication and collaboration products.
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Dr Sabine Mauderer, Member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, delivered a keynote speech at the Keynote Oxford Sustainable Finance Summit 2023, Oxford. Walking down Oxford High Street, I was reminded of a picture by the great English painter William Turner. I am sure you are familiar with the painting. It is entitled High Street, Oxford. It depicts University College on the left, All Souls College on the right, and Carfax Tower in the distance. On my morning walk, I was startled by how little has changed since the early 19th century, when the painting was first exhibited. The buildings are still in place and they appear very well kept. Yet, at the same time, so much has changed. There are buses, cabs, modern amenities and so forth. It is precisely this sort of progress, which has been fuelling another type of change: Climate change. Continue reading…

The Commission is adopting a package of infringement decisions due to the absence of communication by Member States of measures taken to transpose EU directives into national law (referred to as ‘non-communication infringements’). The Commission is sending a letter of formal notice to those Member States who have failed to notify national measures transposing directives, whose transposition deadline expired recently. In this case, there are 25 Member States who have not yet notified full transposition measures for eight EU directives in the fields of health, environment, transport, defence and financial stability, financial services and capital markets union. Member States concerned now have two months to reply to the letters of formal notice and complete their transposition, or the Commission may decide to issue a reasoned opinion. Continue reading…

by Daniel Vaknine

Whistleblowing can be a complex subject with many layers and parts. For those of you not working directly with whistleblowing, here’s everything you need to know about whistleblowing in one place. First of all, what exactly is whistleblowing? Whistleblowing is when someone, for example an employee, reports wrongdoing that they believe is in the public interest. Whistleblowing can, for example, concern illegal activities, such as embezzlement or corruption, or unethical/unfair behaviour at work, such as racism, sexism, or homophobia. Depending on the policy, these problems may be brought to the attention of an authorised person or group either inside or outside the workplace, although the latter is usually not “whistleblowing” in the sense of the law. Continue reading…

Tiff Macklem, Governor of the Bank of Canada, made an opening statement at the press conference following the release of the Monetary Policy Report in Ottawa, Ontario. He was pleased to be there with Senior Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers to discuss today’s policy announcement and the Bank of Canada’s Monetary Policy Report (MPR). Today, we raised our policy interest rate by 25 basis points to 5%. We are also continuing our policy of quantitative tightening. Continue reading…