The transition from one world order to another is in full swing, but it is still unclear how that new world order will look. The advent of AI, China’s rise, and the US’s relative decline offer challenges but also opportunities. The trade war weapon du jour has shifted from tariffs to chokepoints, creating new challenges for governments and manufacturers. Global growth has been remarkably resilient given the headwinds. We expect that resilience to continue in 2026, albeit with considerable risks. Growth in the US is expected to stay solid, but this masks variation and vulnerability below the surface. Eurozone growth is expected to pick up on higher German fiscal spending, while China is expected to implement some modest demand-supportive measures while keeping its manufacturing growth model broadly intact. Fiscal troubles in France and the UK are likely to remain a worry. Inflation in the US is expected to continue accelerating, but to fall below target in the eurozone. Despite this, the divergence in Fed & ECB rates is expected to narrow significantly, with the ECB ‘looking through’ the inflation undershoot in the eurozone and the Fed ‘looking through’ the US inflation overshoot by continuing to cut rates.

Group Economics writes regularly about developments in the macro economy. Here are our latest forecasts on interest rate and currency developments, energy prices and the economic trend in developed and emerging markets.

The US has become a tale of two economies: AI is booming, the remainder is stagnant. Trade and immigration policy are expected to widen the divide. AI investment, and fiscal and monetary easing will drive growth, at the cost of deficits and inflation.

Supply-demand imbalances have not really been tackled in 2025. Extension of the US-China truce will reduce external risks in 2026, but there is still a need to rebalance. We expect a stepping up of targeted measures to support domestic demand, but still no ‘bazooka’. China-US/West: Fragile equilibrium holds after trade deal with US, strategic decoupling to continue. We expect annual GDP growth to slow from 5.0% in 2025 to 4.6% in 2026, and to 4.3% in 2027.

The eurozone economy performed well in 2025, despite the headwinds from US tariffs and intense competition from China – even if that performance is exaggerated by outlier Ireland. We expect growth to re-accelerate in 2026 as German fiscal spending ramps up, though southern European outperformance is expected to wane on the end of the EU’s Recovery & Resilience Facility. The ECB is expected to stay on hold through 2026-7. Near term risks are tilted to another cut given the looming inflation undershoot, but those risks could tilt towards a hike as 2027 develops.

Analysis of 150,000 Dutch households earning a salary provides insight into the development of the cost of living pressures. We examine the extent to which a household’s net income is consumed by fixed expenses and groceries. Grocery prices have increased significantly; households are spending more on them compared to seven years ago. Nevertheless, cost of living is improving because incomes have risen more sharply than fixed expenses and grocery expenses. The percentage of households that spend a large portion of their income on fixed expenses and groceries has decreased.

An analysis of the income of six cohorts of first-year students shows that their financial position has improved. Both the reintroduction of the basic study grant and rising hourly wages have contributed to this. First-year students have become less dependent on student loans. They borrowed less, resulting in a smaller student debt. Last year, first-year students experienced the financial freedom to work fewer hours.

Analysis of 340,000 Dutch households provides insight into the development of the cost of living for the first time. We examine the extent to which a household's net income is consumed by fixed expenses, making basic expenditures and coping with setbacks difficult.

We study the effects of lower housing costs on expenditures by examining the income-dependent rent reduction of 2023. The income-dependent rent reduction is partly offset by a lower housing allowance, and the remaining portion is fully consumed. The net rent reduction thus directly contributes to higher household consumption and is not used to build financial buffers. Our analysis also highlights significant challenges in implementing targeted income-dependent rent policies.

Although extreme gas price increases occurred two years ago, the energy crisis of 2021-2023 is still fresh in our minds. How have household energy costs evolved during and after the energy crisis? It is well-known that not everyone felt the impact of higher energy prices at the same time, but where do we stand now, two years later?

In this analysis, we examine the trend in emission intensity based on greenhouse gases in the EU-27. Emissions intensity indicates the level of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of activity. Energy and emissions intensity are expected to continue to decline, provided that the EU does not relax its climate policy too much.

In May 2024, the European Commission introduced the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), a significant regulation designed to improve the energy efficiency of buildings across the European Union (EU). The directive sets ambitious targets, including the goal of achieving a fully decarbonized building stock by 2050. In this note, we analyse the current state of the Dutch residential real estate sector and project whether the country is on track to meet the ambitious targets set by European regulations.

Bonds issued under the EU Green Bond Standard (EuGBs) outperform regular green bonds both in primary and secondary markets, with higher investor demand and stronger pricing performance. On average, EuGBs attract larger orderbooks at issuance and price at lower new issue premia than regular green bonds and other investment-grade bonds issued during the same timeframe, however, this trend is most prominently visible within corporate bond issuers. After issuance, EuGBs experience more significant spread tightening than regular green bonds, especially in SSA and corporate bonds, with EuGBs from banks actually underperforming in secondary market. EuGBs exhibit lower volatility in secondary markets compared to regular green bonds, as measured by the standard deviation of z-spreads. Our findings are constrained by the small sample size of EuGBs issued year-to-date, limited comparability across ratings and sub-sectors, and the inability to conduct more robust statistical analyses.

Gas consumption in industry remains high, hindering the acceleration of industrial decarbonisation. Although gas consumption in the EU has declined since 2017, natural gas remains a crucial energy source for energy-intensive industries.

Surpassing 1.5°C global warming is increasingly near, and continuing current policies would lead to around a 2.8 °C temperature increase. The EU agreed on its NDC 3.0 just in time; however, ambition seems to have weakened increasing the chance that goals will not be met.

By 2026, CBAM will impose tariffs on the carbon content of imported goods, aiming to prevent carbon leakage and ensure fair competition within EU markets.

This analysis is a follow up from our analysis of 22 October 2025 on the most polluting steel processes and the trend in CO2 emissions from these processes. In the underlying analysis, we examine the impact of carbon costs on companies in the sector and through its various methods of steel production. With both analyses, we hope to provide companies in the sector and their suppliers with more insight into identifying potential risks and opportunities.

We have assessed the possibility that climate policy in the Netherlands will be intensified in the next few years by looking at the climate policy plans in the election programmes of the political parties that currently are polling the highest for the election.

This is the first analysis in a two-part series on the steel industry. With these reports, we aim to provide insights in potential risks and opportunities for companies in the sector and their suppliers. In this first analysis, we focus on the most polluting steel production processes and trends in their associated CO2 emissions. We compare the CO2 emissions from the two main production routes for steel.

Earlier this year, we wrote about how euro investment grade (IG) green bonds exhibit lower volatility and, in most cases, also offer slightly higher liquidity, the latter based on Bloomberg LQA scores, bid-ask spread relationships and relative trading volumes [1]. Our analysis helps to explain the presence of a greenium over time: that is, why investors might be willing to accept a higher price (lower spread) for green bonds in comparison to non-green bonds. In this note, we delve further into the dynamics of the greenium. More specifically, we are interested in understanding the potential drivers of the greenium and if existing research on the topic is still valid when considering more recent data.

Jaap Teerhuis is a Senior Fixed Income Strategist at Group Economics of ABN AMRO Bank

Larissa Fritz is a Senior Fixed Income Strategist, with focus on ESG at Group Economics of ABN AMRO Bank.

Jan-Paul van de Kerke is Senior Economist covering the Netherlands and the eurozone at Group Economics of ABN AMRO Bank.

In this publication, we answer the question of what the path of the Dutch economy and its sectors towards the ultimate 2050 climate-neutral goal might look like. In particular, we look here at the impact that low-carbon technologies can have on reducing greenhouse gases for 21 sectors in our so-called Sector Technology Pathways. What sectors are the heavyweights in the transition, where is reducing greenhouse gases most challenging and what are bottlenecks we need to overcome in the transition?

Climate change creates greater risks that are more frequent and cause more damage to Dutch homes. This study addresses the question of which districts can be deemed ‘climate-vulnerable districts’, i.e. those in which the risks of climate change, but also the costs of energy efficiency measures, may be too much for homeowners or properties to bear.

The energy transition is an economy wide process where a development in one part affects, directly or indirectly, other parts. Bottlenecks or costs challenges could harm an effective energy transition. The effect of today’s bottlenecks on the transition, such as the limited grid capacity, is magnified because of the mismatch in the timeframe for deploying grid extensions versus what is needed for electrification or renewable deployments.

The Rhine, the busiest river in Europe, is of great economic importance. Due to drought, both in 2018 and 2022, there have been episodes where the water level in the Rhine has dropped to critical levels, severely limiting inland shipping. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, in November 2018, low water levels led to a drop in industrial production by 1.5 percent, causing a decline of German GDP by 0.4 percent. 1)

Biodiversity stands for biological diversity. The loss of biodiversity translates into the loss of services provided by ecosystems to the real economy. There are two types of risks associated with biodiversity: physical and transitions risks. Physical risks stem from the loss of biodiversity (for instance, disappearance of animal pollinators, like bees), and transition risks stem from regulations/policies introduced by regulators to mitigate biodiversity loss (such as the introduction of a tax on fertilizers or the implementation of Natura 2000). Physical risks are captured by how much a sector depends on biodiversity (e.g. agriculture depends a lot on animal pollinators, like bees). And transition risks are captured by how much a sector impacts biodiversity (i.e. the more damage a firm causes, the more likely it is to be hit by policies acting against it). The ENCORE database provides qualitative assessments for each sector and sub-sector on their exposure to biodiversity risks and we use these to calculate quantitative biodiversity sector exposure scores. As per existing regulation, banks are required to report their loan book exposure per sector, according to the NACE categorisation. Hence, by combining banks’ loan book exposure per sector and sector scores on biodiversity dependence and impact, we were able to calculate individual banks’ exposure to biodiversity loss risks. Furthermore, we used Natural Language Processing to assess a bank’s awareness of its balance sheet exposure to biodiversity risks.