European Commission issues €11 billion in its 1st syndicated transaction of 2026

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

The European Commission has today raised €11 billion of EU-Bonds in its 1^st syndicated transaction for 2026.

The dual-tranche transaction concerned a new €6 billion EU-Bond maturing on 12 July 2029 and a €5 billion tap of the EU-Bond maturing on 12 October 2055. The 3-year bond was priced 99.839% with a re-offer yield of 2.426% and the 30-year bond was priced 98.934% with a re-offer yield of 4.061%. Bids received were in excess of €65 billion on the new 3-year bond and in excess of €97 billion on the 30-year bond. This equals oversubscription rates of approximately 11-times and 19-times, respectively.

The proceeds of the transaction will be used to finance EU policy programmes most notably in the context of NextGenerationEU and support to Ukraine.

The Commission has now issued €11 billion of its €90 billion funding target for the first half of 2026. A full overview of all EU transactions executed to date is available online. A detailed overview of the EU’s planned transactions for the first half of 2026 is also available in the EU funding plan. The next transaction in the EU’s indicative issuance calendar is an EU-Bill auction on 21 January 2026.

Background

The European Commission is empowered by the EU Treaties to borrow from the international capital markets on behalf of the European Union to finance selected EU policy programmes. It is a well-established name in debt securities markets, with a track record of bond issuances over the past 40 years. All issuances executed by the European Commission are denominated exclusively in euro. All EU borrowing is guaranteed by the EU budget, and contributions to the EU budget are an unconditional legal obligation of all Member States under the EU Treaties.

Since January 2023, the EU funds its different policy programmes by issuing single-branded EU-Bonds rather than separately labelled bonds for individual programmes. This follows the creation of a unified funding approach, extending the diversified funding strategy first established in 2021 for NextGenerationEU to other policy programmes funded by EU borrowing.

To finance EU policies as efficiently and effectively as possible, the Commission’s issuances are structured by semi-annual funding plans and pre-announced issuance windows. In parallel, a framework incentivising EU Primary Dealers to provide quotes on EU securities on electronic platforms is in place since November 2023 and a repurchase facility is available to EU Primary Dealers since October 2024 to support the secondary market liquidity through the use of EU-Bonds in repurchase agreements.

With today’s transaction, the EU has now €575.98 billion outstanding in EU-Bonds under the unified funding approach. Of the proceeds raised, over €377.00 billion has been disbursed to Member States under the NextGenerationEU Recovery and Resilience Facility. A further €75.88 billion has been allocated to other EU programmes benefitting from NextGenerationEU funding. Furthermore, proceeds are being used to finance Ukraine and other EU neighbouring countries. Recent Ukraine support includes €18 billion of disbursements under the EU’s exceptional Macro Financial assistance loan which will be repaid with proceeds from immobilised Russian State assets as part of the G7-led Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration (ERA) loans initiative, and almost €23.20 billion under the €33 billion loan part of the Ukraine Facility (available between 2024 and 2027).*

The EU’s total debt outstanding now stands at about €747.07 billion, of which €33.96 billion in the form of EU-Bills.

For more information

Allocation on the investors in this transaction

EU’s issuance activities 

* Under the Commission’s unified funding approach amounts raised are not necessarily equal to amounts disbursed at a specific point of time.