The European Council published remarks by the President of the Eurogroup at the European Investment Bank Forum setting out a competitiveness-focused agenda centred on mobilising Europe’s savings through the Savings and Investment Union and modernising financial market infrastructure through digital finance. The speech linked the push for deeper capital markets to geopolitical shocks and argued that digital finance should be shaped within a coherent European framework, alongside strong supervision and enforcement. The remarks highlighted that Europeans save around EUR 1.4 trillion annually but that too much remains in low-yield deposits, while the EU lags the United States on R&D intensity (around 2.2% of GDP versus roughly 3.4%) and venture capital investment (roughly 0.3% of GDP versus around 0.7%). Distributed ledger technology and tokenisation were presented as tools to reduce clearing and settlement frictions, lower issuance and intermediation costs, accelerate cross-border payments and widen access to investment, including by reducing issuance costs for SMEs, while warning against risks from fragmentation, crypto-asset and stablecoin volatility and systemic cyber risk. MiCAR was cited as an important step in building trust, and the European Investment Bank Group was positioned as a key de-risking and standard-setting actor to help crowd in private capital. On the digital euro, the speech described a move beyond the preparation phase into further technical work, with a pilot envisaged in 2027 if the legislative framework is agreed during 2026 and the system ready for a potential issuance around 2029.

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