Bulgaria’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) aims to facilitate economic and social recovery from the COVID-19 crisis and to create a more sustainable, equitable, and successful economy. It includes a set of schemes not only to restore the economy's growth potential but to boost it, too. In achieving this, several construction projects to increase energy efficiency and decrease CO2 impact are to be implemented in 2023-2026, says Anita Dangova at EPI, EECFA’s Bulgarian research institute.

Today, the Governing Council of the European Central Bank decided to raise the three key ECB interest rates by 50 basis points and approved the Transmission Protection Instrument (TPI) in an effort to make sure inflation returns to its 2% target over the medium term.

The Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Teresa Czerwińska and the acting Managing Director of EIB Global, Markus Berndt, spoke at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano and shared the EIB’s views on Ukraine’s recovery. They reaffirmed the EU Bank's steadfast position on the importance and urgency of investing in Ukraine's European future, even as fighting continues across the country. Emphasising its support for the recovery plan presented at the conference, the EIB offered a new instrument, the EU-Ukraine Gateway Trust Fund. This financing instrument could support Ukraine’s early and long-term recovery and the country’s journey towards EU membership.

In recent quarters, the National Bank of Hungary (MNB) has measured substantial and growing overvaluation in the housing market, which has been coupled with an increase in banking sector risks related to lending. These risks have not decreased so far even with the uncertainty related to the war situation of the past months; hence, supporting banks' resilience with regulatory tools is warranted. The Financial Stability Board of the MNB has therefore decided to raise bank capital requirements and will increase the countercyclical capital buffer rate to 0.5% from 1 July 2023, for the first time since its introduction six years ago, Hungarian economic daily Portfolio.hu reports.

Since the 1970s, the centre of Bratislava's Old Town has been divided by the multi-stream road Staroměstská Street. The City Hall, together with the Bratislava Metropolitan Institute, now has a plan to improve the area. They want to build a park and a large pedestrian plaza above the road to bring the divided city together and add a new residential and recreational space to the city, the Slovak capital's city hall has announced.

Newly approved building regulations in Slovakia will significantly reduce the endless waiting for building permits. Thanks to advanced digitalisation, the individual processes and the timeframes for their execution are shortened. Builders will thus be able to calculate the capital invested and the entire work schedule more accurately. Therefore, a new Office for Spatial Planning and Construction is being established as a central state administration body, as well as a specialised construction office for the so-called EIA of construction at the Ministry of the Environment, webnoviny.sk informs.

The Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic has decided on a one-year postponement of the effectiveness of part of the Construction Act. Instead of the planned central construction office, which the previous government of Andrej Babiš wanted, they are preparing the digitalisation of the process, the Czech Press Agency reports.

New laws on spatial planning and construction will replace the nearly half-century-old 1976 Construction Act in Slovakia. The National Council of the Slovak Republic approved them on Wednesday with a large number of changes compared to the original form, along with a related amendment to the Competence Act, reports webnoviny.sk.

Last year, the Activity Start indicator of EBI Construction Activity Report reached a total of more than €7 billion (HUF 2,500 billion), an increase of almost 18% against 2020 and of more than 6% against 2019.

The European Central Bank has highlighted growing vulnerabilities in housing markets and stretched financial asset valuations in its Financial Stability Review for November 2021. The ECB has also warned of an increased likelihood of a correction in both residential and commercial real estate markets.