European safe assets are playing an increasingly important role for global investors, amid a scarcity of high-quality and liquid securities and the need to diversify away from dollar-based assets.

The arrival of the European Union as a large and liquid issuer has added to available European safe assets, driving issuance from the ‘E’ name supranationals, or ‘Team Europe’, to over €1tn in 2024. These are comprised of bonds from the EU, European Stability Mechanism, European Financial Stability Facility and European Investment Bank.

However, this milestone is only scratching the surface of the available lending capacity of these institutions, leaving scope for even greater growth and impact. To discuss the development of European safe assets, OMFIF’s Sovereign Debt Institute hosted an exclusive roundtable in Luxembourg in partnership with LBBW. The roundtable brought together senior officials from the European Commission, ESM as well as fixed-income portfolio managers for an in-depth and open discussion on the key issues in European capital markets and the borrowing outlook for 2025.

This report features an edited transcript of the conversation with Siegried Ruhl, European Commission, Kalin Anev Janse, European Stability Mechanism, Yves Bodson, Aness Meski, Spuerkeess, Peter Schneller, DZ Privatbank and Patrick Seifert, Florian Rathgeber, LBBW.