The European Banking Authority published a Methodological Note on the 2016 EU banking sector stress tests and asset review on 24 February. The note covers credit risk; market risk, counterparty credit risk (CCR) and credit value adjustment (CVA); conduct risk and other operational risks; and non-interest income, expenses and capital. There are four tabular annexes: a list of banks in the sample; stress test template overview; summary of qualitative information to be provided by banks; and a summary of key constraints and other quantitative requirements. The EBA Methodological Note has been linked from the EUI Library ECB data resource page. EUI members have access to the Bankscope (BvD) global public and private banking sector database.

Following four months of beta testing, the European Commision launched the European Data Portal on 17 February. The new Portal provides access to 415,000 datasets harvested from 70 data catalogues in 34 countries (28 European Union member states, the EEA, Switzerland and countries in the EU Neighbourhood Policy programme). Data is sourced from national, regional, local or domain-specific public data providers. The Eurovoc Thesaurus allows multilingual searching by data category. Online training materials are provided – with detailed information on data access, sharing and ownership. The portal provides an advanced search function for the discovery of public open data by geographical location. Full details of access to data at the EUI are on this Library page.

The European Capital Markets Institute database was updated to release 2015 on 9 December. ECMI contains statistics on European and global capital markets, including disaggregated data on equity markets and MiFID (Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) statistics for pan-European and national equity markets. Coverage is for 40 stock exchanges for 25 years. The database is structured in eight primary sections, each with multiple sub-divisions: 1. Equity Market, 2. Debt Securities Market, 3. Exchange-traded Derivative Market, 4. Over-the-Counter Derivative Market, 5. Asset Management, 6. Gross Domestic Product, 7. Exchange Rates, and 8. Global Comparative Data. Access is via library server, restricted to EUI members. Full details.

The OECD and the European Commission launched an upgraded version of HEInnovate – an online “self-assessment tool for higher education institutions looking for inspiration and guidance” on 18 November. “HEInnovate facilitates the assessment of an HEI in a systematic way, opening up discussion and debate on the entrepreneurial and innovative nature of higher education institutions… It is free, confidential and open to anyone to use. HEInnovate can be used by all types of higher education institutions.” The programme of the upgrade conference, held at the Bibliothèque Solvay, Brussels, is now available [PDF].

The European Banking Authority, released data from the 2015 EU-wide transparency exercise on 27 November. The exercise “provides detailed bank-by-bank data on capital positions, risk exposure amounts and asset quality on 105 banks from 21 countries of the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA)… The data is published at the highest level of consolidation, covering around 70% of total EU banking assets for the reference dates of 31 December 2014 and 30 June 2015.” The EUI Library maintains a Directory of Eurozone, EU and European Statistical Data.

The European Commission launched the European Data Portal (beta version) with access to 250,000 public-sector open datasets on 25 November. The new portal harvests metadata from 34 European countries (28 EU member states, EEA, Switzerland and countries in the EU Neighbourhood Policy programme) sourced from national, regional, local or domain-specific public data providers. The Eurovoc Thesaurus allows multilingual searching by data category. Online training materials are provided – with detailed information on data access, sharing and ownership. The portal provides an advanced search function for the discovery of public open data by geographical location. The European Data Portal is developed by the European Commission and partners: Capgemini, INTRASOFT International, Fraunhofer Fokus, con terra, Sogeti, the Open Data Institute, Time.Lex and the University of Southampton. The EC invites feedback on the beta version via this form. Details of access to data at the EUI are on this Library page.