Funding Plan H1 2025

On 10 December the Commission released its funding plan for H1 2025, with a funding target of €90 billion of EU-Bonds between January and end-June 2025.

The announced plan follows the completion of €138 billion of long-term funding operations in 2024, in line with pre-announced targets. Borrowing operations on this scale in H1 2025 will enable the EU to continue to build the depth of the EU Bond market while at the same time servicing the wide range of policies that rely on EU-Bond issuance for funding.[1]

For 2025, the Commission anticipates issuing a total of around €160 billion in EU-Bonds, ensuring consistent support for its borrowing-based programmes. The exact funding target for the whole year will be communicated through the semi-annual funding planning for H2 2025 as funding needs are confirmed.

For H1 2025, the issuance calendar foresees seven EU-Bond auctions and six syndicated transactions between January and end-June 2025.

EU-Bonds will continue to be issued using benchmark maturities from 3 to 30 years, with tap transactions and new lines, using auctions and syndications. The maturities for the new lines will depend on market conditions and the intention to bring liquidity to the curve where needed (with a tentative focus on 3y, 10y and 20y).

Issuance volumes via auctions are expected to increase during the semester in line with the increased funding target, keeping the auction share stable. This increase will be facilitated by the introduction of three-leg bond auctions during the semester, with an indicative start as of Q2 2025. In the same vein, the Commission is working towards introducing non-competitive auction allocations (“greenshoe option”) to allocate additional amounts of auctioned bonds in the immediate aftermath of an auction. This additional feature follows the example of many sovereign auction programmes which use this mechanism to provide their primary dealers with incentives to support auctions. The Commission is working with a view to implement non-competitive allocations as part of the Funding Plan for H2 2025.

In line with reported green expenditures from Member States, the Commission will also continue to issue NextGenerationEU Green Bonds from its current level of €68 billion to finance the green component of the Recovery and Resilience Facility. NextGenerationEU Green Bond issuances in H1 2025 are expected to take place via tapping of existing bonds to support the liquidity of these lines before launching new ones.

Amounts raised through EU-Bond issuance will be supplemented by short-term funding through EU-Bills and other short-term funding tools. The EU-Bill programme will hence continue to be progressively increased in H1 2025. The increased volumes will be facilitated by the introduction 3-leg Bill auctions. This will include the launch of a new 12-month EU-Bill line from the beginning of the semester, in addition to the existing 3- and 6-month lines.

Consistent with the Commission’s commitment to open and transparent communication to markets, information about EU’s issuance windows in H1 2025 is available below.

Issuance weeks for EU-Bonds

The Commission has planned six syndicated transactions and seven EU-Bond auctions between January and end-June 2025.

ISSUANCE WEEKS FOR EU-BONDS SYNDICATED TRANSACTIONS:

EU-BONDS AUCTION DATES:

Issuance weeks for EU-Bills

The Commission will issue EU-Bills using 3-month, 6-month and 12-month tenors as per the planned calendar below. New 6-month and 12-month lines will be issued during the first auction of the month, while the second auction of the month will be used to tap already outstanding issuances (as of H2 2025, previously issued 12m line will be used to tap the 6m bucket as per issuance pattern established since 2021 on 3-month and 6-month lines).

EU-BILL AUCTION DATES:

*All calendar information is indicative and transactions might be cancelled or additional transactions may be executed.