Funding plans

In line with established market practice and as part of its unified funding approach, the Commission publishes on a regular basis:

• Annual borrowing decision
• Semi-annual funding plans

The annual borrowing decision and the funding plan are key to ensure sound financial management, accountability and transparency in the implementation of EU's debt management operations.

The annual borrowing decision lays out the maximum amount of borrowing the Commission can execute in a given year. The semi-annual funding plan sets out the Commission's indicative issuance calendar and expected total issuance volumes for the forthcoming 6 months.

As part of its open and transparent communication to markets, the Commission publishes a quarterly newsletter updating investors of the latest developments in its borrowing and lending activities.

Annual borrowing decision

The annual borrowing decision sets a maximum ceiling on the borrowing operations the Commission can plan over a period of one year.

It also sets a range for maximum issuance amounts of long-term and short-term funding, the average maturity of the EU's long-term funding and limits the amount the Commission can issue in a single transaction.

Semi-annual funding plans

The Commission's 6-monthy funding plan map the borrowing in the coming 6 months, within the limits of the annual borrowing decision. Through its funding plans, the Commission manages market expectations and makes sure it can raise the necessary funds to cover for the relevant payment needs.

To ensure predictability, the Commission regularly communicates key elements of the funding plan to market participants. In particular, the Commission publishes on a regular basis:

• The targeted amounts to be financed by EU-Bonds;
• The number and timing of the expected syndicated transactions;
• The target auction dates for EU-Bonds and EU-Bills issuances.

Latest funding plan

On 19 December 2022, the European Commission issued its semi-annual funding plan for the period January to end-June 2023, the first under the Commission's new unified funding approach.

Under the new approach, the Commission will be issuing single branded EU-Bonds, internally allocating the proceeds according to the needs of the various policy programmes funded through bond issuances.

The Commission intends to issue up to €80 billion in EU-Bonds between January and end-June 2023, complemented by short-term EU-Bills. The Commission will use to funds to finance the NextGenerationEU recovery programme (around €70 billion) and provide support to Ukraine via the Macro-Financial Assistance + (MFA +) programme (around €10 billion).

Further issuances under existing MFA programmes of much smaller scale are also possible. Information about them will be provided separately.

The EU-Bonds will be topped up by short-term EU-Bills.

EU-Bonds

• The European Commission intends to issue up to €80 billion in EU-Bonds between January and June 2023.
• The Commission will issue both conventional and green bonds, with all NextGeneration green bonds issued in full respect of the NextGenerationEU Green Bond framework.
• As in 2022, the Commission will continue to privilege the issuance of benchmark maturities across the yield curve (from 3 to 30 years), subject to market conditions.
• The Commission has planned 7 syndicated transactions and 8 EU-Bond auctions between January and June 2023.
• The Commission will continue to issue its EU-Bonds via a combination of syndications and auctions.
• To achieve greater liquidity of its bonds, the Commission will make greater use of auctions relative to previous funding plans.
• Bond auctions can be single- or multi-bond auctions and will be used either to tap existing bonds or to issue new bonds.
• The details of each bond auction will be released on the Wednesday preceding the auction in question.

EU-Bills

• The Commission will continue to execute EU-Bill auctions on the first and third Wednesday of each month.
• The Commission will continue to issue EU-Bills using 3-month and 6-month tenors.
• New 6-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. The Commission will continue to issue in the 3-month maturity only by tapping old 6-month lines that are now 3-months from maturity.
• The details of each EU-Bills auction will be released on the Friday preceding the auction in question.

Issuance calendar

Issuance weeks for EU-Bonds syndicated transactions:

EU-Bonds auction dates:

EU-Bills auction dates:

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

The next funding plan, to cover the period from July to December 2023, will be published in June 2023.

Past funding plans

Documents

All documents linked to the EU unified funding approach are available in the documents' section of our website.