The European Commission announced this Wednesday that it plans to place up to 80 billion euros in European Union bonds on the markets during the second half of 2026. With this new round of issuances, the total volume of joint EU debt for the entire fiscal year will amount to 180 billion euros.
The resources obtained through these placements will serve to nourish various European programs supported by common debt. These include payments to Member States under "NextGenerationEU," financial assistance to Ukraine, including the new loan to support the country, and the "SAFE" instrument aimed at strengthening the acquisition of defense capabilities, as detailed by the Community Executive in a statement.
Brussels will continue to use its unified funding strategy, in force since 2023, which allows it to access markets under a single European bond brand instead of making separate issuances for each initiative. To do this, it will combine long-term and short-term debt securities with the aim of covering the different EU policies backed by common debt.
In this context, the Community Executive plans to carry out four syndicated issues and six auctions of European bonds in the second half of the year. In parallel, it will continue to use short-term financing instruments to complement fundraising and preserve the necessary flexibility to meet its liquidity needs, according to the Commission.
In addition, the Community institution will maintain the use of "NextGenerationEU" green bonds to finance projects linked to the ecological transition. These are issuances associated with environmental spending that Member States notify under the Recovery and Resilience Facility and with which Brussels has so far raised 84.3 billion euros. The Commission intends to continue using this tool beyond 2026 to manage the debt linked to the European recovery fund.
The joint EU debt will also continue to finance support for Ukraine, which has already received 25.6 billion euros of the 33 billion planned in the Ukraine Facility, to which the new support loan of 90 billion euros approved by the EU in December will be added.
Likewise, a portion of these funds is directed to the "SAFE" instrument, created to facilitate loans to member states in order to strengthen their defense capabilities. The first pre-financing disbursements from this mechanism began in May of this year.