Each year, the Federal Planning Bureau (fpb) prepares a medium-term outlook for the Belgian economy with its macro-econometric hermes model. One of the key inputs of this exercise is a baseline scenario for the Belgian international economic environment, which includes an outlook for the output, imports, prices and financial variables of the major trading partners of Belgium. Traditionally, this international environment is based on the medium-term outlook presented by the European Commission in its Autumn Forecasts or the most recent available medium-term outlook of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (oecd).