I Built a Free MCP Server for European Financial Data

#mcp #typescript #claude #ai

The ECB deposit rate is 2%. Eurostat publishes inflation for all 27 EU countries every month. All of it is free. Getting it into Claude without writing a parser takes 30 seconds now.

The problem

ECB and Eurostat APIs are free and official. But their responses look like this:

<message:GenericData>
  <message:DataSet>
    <generic:Series>
      <generic:SeriesKey>
        <generic:Value id="FREQ" value="M"/>
        <generic:Value id="REF_AREA" value="U2"/>
        <generic:Value id="INDICATOR" value="MRR_FR"/>
      </generic:SeriesKey>
      <generic:Obs>
        <generic:ObsDimension value="2024-04"/>
        <generic:ObsValue value="4.5"/>

SDMX-XML with dataset codes that require reading a 40-page spec to interpret. Not something you want inside a Claude prompt.

What eu-finance does

6 tools, all returning flat JSON:

Tool	What you get	Source
`get_ecb_rates`	Deposit facility, main refi, marginal lending rates	ECB SDW
`get_euro_exchange`	EUR vs 30+ currencies, latest or by date	ECB / Frankfurter
`get_eu_inflation`	HICP inflation by EU country, monthly/annual	Eurostat
`get_eu_gdp`	GDP by country, quarterly, growth or absolute	Eurostat
`get_eu_unemployment`	Unemployment by country and age group	Eurostat
`compare_eu_economies`	Inflation + GDP + unemployment side by side	All sources

No API key. No account.

Install

Claude Code:

claude mcp add eu-finance -- npx -y @nexusforgetools/eu-finance

Claude Desktop / Cursor / Windsurf / Cline:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "eu-finance": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@nexusforgetools/eu-finance"]
    }
  }
}

What you can ask

Ask in plain language — eu-finance handles the API calls:

How it works

Calls ECB SDW and Eurostat SDMX REST APIs directly — both free, no auth required. Every response is normalized into typed flat JSON before leaving the tool. Redis cache in HTTP mode (1h for rates, 6h for inflation, 24h for GDP). Dual transport: stdio for local clients, HTTP/SSE for server deployments. TypeScript/ESM, Zod validation.

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