BRUSSELS — Donald Trump has become Brussels’ inadvertent poster child for bonds issued by the EU.

Not because the U.S. president is a fan of the EU. But because his trade tariffs and erratic foreign policy, ranging from threats to annex Greenland to waging war in the Middle East, are driving spooked investors to buy more EU debt. It is welcome news for the European Commission as it scales up its planned debt issuance to take on new tasks such as spending on its defense and supporting Ukraine’s resistance against Russian invasion.

Brussels’ sales pitch goes like this: The EU’s slow, consensus-driven decision-making is a bastion of stability in a Trumpian world that’s upended the global order. You can buy into that stability by investing in eurobonds.

The pitch is working. Money managers from the U.K., Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Oceania snapped up 43 percent of the eurobonds that the Commission put up for auction since the start of 2026, according to data seen by POLITICO.

That’s an increase of 8 percentage points from the average of the last six years, putting the EU’s budget commissioner, Piotr Serafin, in a favorable position ahead of his road show in mid-April to sell eurobonds to investors based in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore. The Commission issued €52 billion in bonds since the start of 2026, up from €44 billion in the same period in 2025.

“There is growing demand for ‘Europe,’ for its alignment with the respect of the rules-based international order and values. And hence the increased demand for EU bonds,” a senior EU official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, told POLITICO.

The eurozone’s bailout fund and its predecessor — the European Stability Mechanism and the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism — have encountered a similar trend. They have jointly issued €566 billion since 2010 and sold record levels of debt to non-EU countries in 2025, according to ESM data presented in January.

U.K. figures include international investors that are registered in the United Kingdom.

Since the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran in late February, central banks, governments, and international investors have sold more than $80 billion net in U.S. Treasurys. On the other side of the Atlantic, the EU is harnessing these events to burnish its credentials as a safe haven for worried foreign investors.

“EU leaders have been pushing that Europe is predictable in terms of its policy, and that in today’s current, global geopolitical environment, that is something that a lot of investors and market participants will pick up on,” said Ken Egan from the KBRA credit rating agency.

The U.S. sell-off is far from an exodus. The U.S. Treasury market is roughly $31 trillion, while the market in bonds issued by the European Commission is barely €1 trillion.

But growing demand for these eurobonds, coupled with a solid credit rating, allows the Commission to borrow at a lower cost than many indebted EU governments can. In a sign of growing market confidence, the extra yield on the Commission‘s bonds over German government bonds — long regarded as the safest in the eurozone — has narrowed to around 40 basis points. That is way down from 70 basis points in 2022. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.

U.S. Treasury bonds, meanwhile, are offering investors a premium of more than 130 basis points over the Bund.

To be sure, there are more factors at play than concerns about Trump’s policies. Some investors are buying EU bonds because they come with a very low risk, while greater issuance has increased the liquidity of the market, meaning investors find them easier to buy and sell.

Had it not been for joint-debt, governments would have struggled to tackle back-to-back crises on their own. EU debt financed the €650 billion post-pandemic recovery fund, €150 billion in cheap loans to boost military spending across the bloc, and a €90 billion lifeline to help Ukraine defend against Russian forces — currently being blocked by Hungary.

The growing appetite for eurobonds is also emboldening the EU’s ambitions of rivaling the greenback as the world’s reserve currency. The U.S. has held that status for decades, formalized by the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944, which made the dollar the anchor of the global financial system and helped Washington borrow cheaply.

The greenback still accounts for some 56 percent of all global reserves, compared with the second-placed euro, which has remained stable at around 20 percent. But the Commission is seizing the moment to lure foreign investors and expand its global influence. 

“When investors try to gradually delink their economy from the dollar over economic stability, they are looking at the euro,” the senior EU official said.

The rise of EU debt

The EU’s long-held taboo around issuing joint debt broke in the wake of the pandemic after years of resistance during the euro crisis from Northern European governments.

Eurobond issuances continued to rack up over the ensuing years, as the likes of France and Italy found themselves too indebted to tackle recent crises alone. Those money problems are unlikely to relent, as the bloc contends with the economic fallout from the war in Iran and Trump’s repeated threats to withdraw the U.S. security umbrella from Europe.

EU leaders are also determined to turbocharge the economy to keep pace with the U.S. and China, a costly endeavor that would require around €800 billion a year, according to the former president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi.

While this scale of investment remains far off, the Commission, which has become the world’s third-largest AAA-rated bond issuer according to several rating agencies, behind Canada and Germany, suggested that it will continue to issue debt in the coming years. The rating of U.S. Treasurys varies from AAA to the slightly lower AA, depending on the agency.

In its new seven-year budget proposal from 2028, Brussels signaled that it will resort to eurobonds to finance Ukraine’s reconstruction, respond to crises and lend money for countries to invest in EU priorities. However, frugal Northern countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands, which pay lower interest rates than the Commission by borrowing under their own name, are opposing more EU joint debt in the ongoing negotiations.

Until the new budget is agreed, investors are waiting on the EU executive to continue its road shows, with plans to sell €160 billion in eurobonds this year — a €10 billion increase from 2025.

“The global market … is more and more afraid of the American greenback. It’s looking for alternatives,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in February. “Let’s offer it European debt.”