On the global role of the euro

–having regard to the report of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (A10-0000/2026),

General considerations

1.Notes the gradual but profound transformation of the international monetary and financial system; calls for the EU to reduce its strategic dependencies and strengthen its capacity for autonomous action;

2.Notes that, in recent episodes of geopolitical turmoil, safe-haven inflows have contributed to appreciation pressures on the euro, thereby turning the euro area into a ‘passive safe haven’ that absorbs shocks instigated elsewhere without fully harnessing the corresponding benefits;

3.Underlines the EU’s dependence on foreign financial market infrastructures, ranging from retail payments reliant on international card schemes to wholesale transactions dependant on systems provided by US corporations;

4.Underlines the reliance of euro area banks on US dollar wholesale funding; warns that this may expose the euro area in times of stress to a possible weaponisation of dollar swap lines;

5.Stresses that such dependencies expose EU citizens and firms to extraterritorial application of sanctions from non-EU countries, or to the threat thereof; considers the fact that members of the International Criminal Court have been blocked from accessing basic banking services to be a regrettable illustration of those vulnerabilities;

6.Agrees, therefore, with the ECB President on the need for the euro to ‘move from being “in between” to being a full international currency’; underlines that a stronger role for the euro internationally would help insulate Europe’s economy from swings in foreign exchange rates, secure better financing conditions for the European economy and expand protections from foreign measures;

7.Considers, in this context, that the internationalisation of the euro is about strengthening its role within a more multipolar international monetary system;

8.Stresses that a stronger global role for the euro will not emerge through market forces alone, but requires a coherent strategy by which public authorities establish the conditions for its wider use; observes that the US and China are actively pursuing such strategies in support of their currencies;

Trade, international payments and settlement

9.Considers that strengthening the international role of the euro requires its wider use across cross-border value chains, meaning not only trade invoicing, but also the ability of market participants across jurisdictions to borrow, lend and settle in euro throughout those chains;

10.Calls on the Commission to make access to EU investment programmes conditional on euro invoicing across value chains, promote the use of the euro in trade agreements, and work with industry actors to strengthen its use in invoicing, procurement and payments;

11.Emphasises that borrowing, lending and settling in euro requires a sovereign European public digital payments and settlement infrastructure ensuring interoperability and speed in cross-border, cross-currency transactions, with a European central bank digital currency (CBDC) lying at its core;

12.Strongly supports the establishment of a European CBDC designed without undue restrictions on its retail use and without precluding its wholesale functionality; welcomes, in this regard, the ECB’s wholesale initiatives, notably Pontes and Appia; supports their more rapid implementation;

13.Stresses that reinforcing the euro’s role across cross-border value chains requires the further development of bilateral swap lines with EU Member States, which remain currently restricted; points out that expanding the Eurosystem’s international liquidity backstops to partner jurisdictions, including in the Global South, can help safeguard euro liquidity abroad and thereby enhance the offshore use of the euro;

Towards EU safe assets

14.Calls for the development of a deep and liquid common European safe asset as a key precondition for strengthening the euro’s international role; points out that EU safe assets can provide high-quality collateral in international repo markets and offer a euro-denominated liquidity buffer alongside public backstops; underlines that, within the EU, such assets would reduce financing costs, help create a genuine European bond yield curve, which would deepen capital market integration, and weaken the bank-sovereign nexus;

15.Stresses that an EU safe asset can only fulfil these functions if issuance reaches a scale sufficient to create a deep and liquid market amounting to 20% of the EU's GDP; underlines that this requires both new common issuance to finance European public goods and the exchange of part of the outstanding stock of national sovereign debt into common EU bonds;

16.Supports the establishment of a European debt agency, anchored in the EU's budgetary framework, that would consolidate existing borrowing programmes and future common issuance under one roof; considers that this would lower issuance costs across different legal regimes and help develop a more liquid market;

Financial stability

17.Underlines that US dollar-backed stablecoins actively reinforce the international dominance of the dollar, by increasing demand for US debt and further boosting the use of the dollar in international transactions;

18.Warns that the circulation in the EU of fully fungible US dollar-denominated stablecoins issued by both EU and non-EU entities creates new financial stability risks by incentivising the concentration of reserves in the United States while shifting redemption pressure to the EU; strongly urges the Commission to clarify that such multi-issuance schemes are not permissible under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation1;

19.Warns of the risks to the EU's financial stability that could arise from a correction in highly leveraged markets, including the AI sector in the United States; stresses that such shocks may be amplified through EU banks’ reliance on short-term US dollar wholesale funding; underlines the need to monitor closely, beyond net current account balances, gross capital flows as a source of macroeconomic imbalances;

Investment for an EU industrial policy

20.Considers that the EU's core challenge is not a shortage of financial capital, but a lack of state capacity to direct it towards common strategic priorities at the necessary pace and scale; stresses that this requires an industrial policy that provides not only incentives, but also the necessary discipline;

21.Supports the establishment of an EU sovereignty fund as an effective instrument to reduce reliance on US asset managers and redirect European savings from US equity markets towards strategic investment in the EU;

22.Calls on the Commission and the ECB to present, by the end of 2026, a joint euro internationalisation strategy to Parliament and the Council for approval;

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23.Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.