On Thursday 18 January, the European Commission presented a first positive progress report on the action plan to tackle non-performing loans (NPL), which was adopted by the member states in July of last year (see EUROPE 11827).
“The sun is up and the fog is lifting”, an optimistic European Financial Services Commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, told the press. He said that the concrete efforts made by banks, the supervisory authorities, the member states and the Commission were paying off.