(Reuters) – The European Union is launching a survey on Wednesday to help boost the liquidity of its debt.
The bloc will survey market participants to help identify further ways to increase liquidity and boost the attractiveness of its bonds, the European Commission said in a statement on Tuesday.
The EU has set out to raise up to 800 billion euros ($854.00 billion) in common debt by 2026 to finance a post-COVID recovery fund, in addition to an earlier pandemic scheme.
This has made it one of the world’s biggest bond issuers in less than three years.
But EU funding officials have said investors do not treat it like a government, even though it is raising joint debt with the backing of member states.
Reuters reported exclusively in April that the union was preparing to approach index providers for its debt to be included in government bond indexes, a move that would attract steady demand from a much bigger pool of global investors.
The EU has also started selling the bonds backing its various programmes under a single label and is preparing a framework for banks to provide investors with regular pricing quotes.
“We will launch an investor survey swiftly which will help us to serve our investors even better and to improve our funding strategy and market approach further,” said Johannes Hahn, the bloc’s commissioner for budget and administration.
($1 = 0.9368 euros)
(Reporting by Yoruk Bahceli; Editing by Christina Fincher)
