The European Council published remarks by Eurogroup President Kyriakos Pierrakakis at the European Investment Bank Forum arguing that Europe needs to mobilise its savings more effectively through the Savings and Investment Union and by modernising capital market infrastructure via digital finance, while embedding innovation in a coherent EU-wide regulatory and supervisory framework. The speech also positioned the digital euro as a strategic initiative to keep central bank money available in the digital age and to support more resilient European payment systems. The address linked the competitiveness agenda to geopolitical shocks and to Europe’s structural productivity challenge, noting annual European savings of about EUR 1.4 trillion that are often held in low-yield deposits, EU R&D intensity of around 2.2% of GDP versus roughly 3.4% in the United States, and venture capital investment of roughly 0.3% of GDP versus around 0.7% in the United States. It argued that reliance on bank-based intermediation, fragmented capital markets and risk aversion limit scale, and cast the European Investment Bank Group as a key actor for de-risking and crowding in private capital. On digital finance, it highlighted potential efficiency gains from distributed ledger technology and tokenisation, alongside risks of renewed fragmentation, crypto-asset and stablecoin volatility, and systemic cyber risk, citing the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation as an important step in building trust. On next steps for the digital euro, the remarks said the project is moving beyond the preparation phase into further technical work, with a pilot possible in 2027 if the legislative framework is agreed during 2026, and the system potentially ready for issuance around 2029.

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