Message from the Managing Director
"The ESM emerged from 2020 stronger, more robust, and resilient to confront and overcome any future challenges to euro are financial stability."
KLAUS REGLING
Managing Director
European leaders worked hard in 2020 to secure euro area preparedness against future crises, agreeing to reform the ESM to fortify the euro area against future shocks. Under this reform, the ESM will:
- serve as common backstop to the EU body that resolves failing banks
- strengthen the preventive and precautionary features of its toolkit, and
- enhance its role in future programmes in cooperation with the European Commission.
Soon after the crisis erupted in 2020, European leaders introduced the ESM's Pandemic Crisis Support as part of Europe’s initial €540 billion response to aid countries and cushion the blows to the European economy. To finance this credit line, the ESM intends to issue social bonds, seizing the crisis as an opportunity to accelerate its commitment to Environmental, Social, and Governance matters.
Despite the extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic, the ESM met the demands of its mandates to its usual high standards by swiftly shifting to digital channels to foster collaboration with our external stakeholders and among staff.