ContextSpeech by the Bundesbank President in Frankfurt to an audience of European officials, at the start of Ireland's EU Council presidency.
Why it mattersAddressed to European ambassadors, this speech ties the digital euro and capital markets union to Europe's economic sovereignty.
- Europe's capital markets are too fragmented to attract global investors.
- Europe depends on foreign providers for payments.
- The euro's global role needs to be protected.
- Complete the savings and investments union.
- Introduce the digital euro as a European payment infrastructure.
- Get EU institutions and member states to act together.
Read the speech summary
1. The savings and investments union
Speaking in Frankfurt for the EU's Irish Presidency, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel urged action on two files. First, the savings and investments union: Europe relies on outside venture capital, especially in later-stage rounds, though its high savings could finance its own scale-ups. He backs the One Europe, One Market Roadmap, with a single EU-wide company form, updated securitisation rules and a market integration and supervision package to be adopted this year; he welcomes more centralised supervision of securities and non-banks, with proportionate design and a role for central banks, and suggests a 28th regime for digital securities to reduce national fragmentation and strengthen the euro's international role.
2. Sovereignty in payments
The euro is the world's second most important currency, and holding that position takes broad capital markets, stability-oriented monetary policy and modern payment infrastructure that keeps working even in an emergency. Yet non-European firms such as Mastercard, Visa and PayPal dominate, a dependence as risky as in defence or AI. Europe needs its own digital ecosystem anchored by central-bank digital currency for both wholesale and public use. The digital euro would work in stores, online and person to person and give private innovators a European base. Trilogue talks began last week, a pilot starts in mid-2027 and launch is still planned for 2029. Europe, he concluded, works only when it works together, not just through a national lens.