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European Commission - Speech [Check Against Delivery] Keynote speech by Commissioner Piotr Serafin at the 8th Annual EC-EIB- ESM Capital Markets Seminar, 1 October 2026, Luxembourg Luxembourg, 1 October 2026 Ladies and gentlemen, I want to start by welcoming you on behalf of the European Commission to the second day of this Seminar. I am pleased to see that this Seminar remains a key forum bringing together private s...
European Commission - Speech [Check Against Delivery] Keynote speech by Commissioner Piotr Serafin at the 8th Annual EC-EIB- ESM Capital Markets Seminar, 1 October 2026, Luxembourg Luxembourg, 1 October 2026 Ladies and gentlemen, I want to start by welcoming you on behalf of the European Commission to the second day of this Seminar. I am pleased to see that this Seminar remains a key forum bringing together private sector investors, the financial community, and the official sector. And I would like to express my thanks to our partners – the European Investment Bank and the European Stability Mechanism – in making this gathering possible. Ladies and Gentlemen, If I have to sum up our EU-bond issuance activities since last year, I would say that it has been a busy year, but also a rewarding year. The global backdrop has again been challenging. Just think back to what has happened since we last met here in October 2025. The list of new challenges and perils is long: conflicts in the Middle East, an escalation of the war in Ukraine, increased security threats in Europe, renewed energy prices' and inflation hikes, further trade tensions, et cetera. As mentioned by President Von der Leyen, in the cold fragility of today's world, only Europe can provide true sovereignty to Europeans. And to do that, we obviously also need to bolster our capacity to act, including on the budgetary and financial front. The developments of the last year show once again that borrowing has become one of the tools in our toolkit that we can use to respond to the challenges that we face. Last year, I spoke about how the SAFE program would buttress our capacity to take more responsibility for our own security. I am pleased to see that the program has solicited a lot of interest, and is off to a strong start. At the end of last year, our Member States entrusted us with another borrowing mandate, this time to support Ukraine. Also this program is now up and running, thereby helping Ukraine to head off the relentless attacks by Russia. These new borrowing mandates – together 240bn EUR – ensure that the EU will have a continued presence in the bond markets for decades to come. And there may be additional borrowing mandates coming soon, depending on the outcome of the discussions on the next multi-annual budget. It is too early to tell, but I do expect that some of the proposed mandates will be supported. In any case, our existing borrowing mandates have kept us very busy, not least because we are now in the final year of the NGEU program. We have also made continued progress in developing the eco-system around EU-bonds. The liquidity of EU-bonds has continued to improve. According to the International Capital Market Association, the turnover of EU bonds now places us in fourth place in Europe, just ahead of Spain. Thanks to this improved liquidity, we have been able to start pricing our bonds against our own curve. We are quite proud about this development, as it is a testament to the enhanced liquidity of EU bonds. The market infrastructure around EU-bonds has continued to develop well. We see increased use of EU- bonds as collateral and a good development of the repo-market. As for the futures market, we are hopeful that we may see further progress in the months to come. I want to emphasise the point on safety of our bonds. We have all been watching closely the developments in the international financial markets of late. And it is clear that we are entering exciting but also choppy financial waters. In such times, it is important to have safe havens. I am pleased to see that EU bonds increasingly tend to be seen as such a safe haven – a liquid and safe European asset. Despite the turbulence in recent months, we have seen strong demand. One reason is obviously our triple-A rating. Another is that EU-bonds – by being a pan-European instrument backed by a pan-European budget – offer an in-built protection against country-specific risks. But it is more than that. We believe that EU-bonds have another ‘competitive advantage' that you cannot find in balance sheets or prospectuses. It is our attachment to being predictable, reliable, and rule-based. This corresponds to the EU's broader attachment to being a stable pillar in a world order which is anything but stable. Some may say that this makes us quite boring. But we believe that boring is good. In these turbulent times, it is better to be boring and predictable, than unreliable and unpredictable. I welcome that this is being recognised, not just from within our borders, but also increasingly by third countries. We have indeed seen growing interest in our issuances from abroad. International investors – especially the ones from the Asia Pacific region and the Middle East – play an ever-larger role in our issuances. We obviously very much welcome these developments, and will continue to work on expanding our global footprint. Ladies and Gentlemen, In recent months, I have met many investors, inside Europe but also from third countries, with two missions to Asia. One recurrent message from them is the desire to diversify. My reply is that EU bonds offer a very good instrument to diversify, by giving investors a safe gateway for investing into Europe as a whole. My second message is that increasingly EU-bonds are liquid as the large sovereigns, they have a market infrastructure like the large sovereigns, and they are priced like the large sovereigns. And therefore we will continue our engagements with the index providers and the financial industry to support the inclusion of EU bonds in sovereign indices. Ladies and gentlemen, with these remarks, I hope to have given you some inspiration for your further discussions. I wish you all a very interesting second day of this Seminar, and hope to see you also next year. Thank you. SPEECH/26/2043 <@rel_link@> Press contacts: Balazs UJVARI (+32 2 295 45 78) Isabel OTERO BARDERAS (+32 2 296 69 25) General public inquiries: Europe Direct by phone 00 800 67 89 10 11 or by email
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