Europe has a peculiar problem: it saves a lot, but a very large share of those savings remains outside capital markets. According to the European Commission, around 70% of EU households’ financial savings — some 10 trillion euros — is held in bank deposits.
Deposits play an important role: they provide liquidity and a high level of protection for money that may be needed in the short term. The European debate, therefore, is not about replacing saving with investment, but about asking whether a larger share of capital allocated to the long term could be channelled towards companies, infrastructure and innovation.
That is one of the main objectives of the Savings and Investments Union — SIU —, the strategy launched by the European Commission in March 2025 and which has since started to translate into concrete measures.
Europe saves a lot, but invests differently
The difference with the United States cannot be explained only by Europeans being more risk-averse.
As El Confidencial pointed out, in Spain alone households hold more than one trillion euros in current accounts and deposits. This is compounded by the significant weight of housing within household wealth.
But there is also a structural difference in the way the economy is financed. Europe has traditionally depended much more on bank lending, while the United States has considerably deeper capital markets.
According to The Economist, the combined value of EU stock markets is equivalent to approximately 85% of its GDP, compared with around 220% in the United States.
This matters especially for certain companies. A traditional SME can finance itself through a bank loan, but innovative and fast-growing companies often also need capital willing to assume greater uncertainty. The Commission itself notes that Europe’s investment needs particularly affect SMEs and innovative companies that cannot rely exclusively on bank credit.
Why does Europe want to mobilise those savings now?
The scale of the challenge is considerable. Based on the Draghi report, the Commission estimates that Europe needs between 750 and 800 billion euros in additional investment each year until 2030, even before fully incorporating the recent increase in defence needs.
That capital must finance, among other areas:
- energy transition;
- digitalisation;
- innovation;
- infrastructure;
- growing companies;
- and new strategic and defence needs.
Brussels’ objective is to better connect the high volume of European savings with these financing needs. As the official Savings and Investments Union strategy explains, the aim is to improve citizens’ financial opportunities and, at the same time, increase the European economy’s capacity to finance productive investment.
This does not mean that deposits do not finance the economy: they are part of the banking system and enable lending. What Europe is seeking is to complement that model with deeper and more accessible capital markets.
What the Savings and Investments Union is doing
The SIU is structured around several lines of action. These include increasing retail participation in markets, developing supplementary pensions, facilitating business financing, reducing fragmentation between national markets and moving towards more integrated supervision.
One of the measures most directly related to individuals is Savings and Investment Accounts — SIAs.
In September 2025, the Commission recommended that Member States develop simple accounts to invest in products such as shares, bonds and funds. The model proposes different providers, ease of transferring investments, simplified tax procedures and tax incentives defined by each country. It is not a single European account that can already be opened across the EU, but rather a model that Member States must adapt to their national systems.
Financial education is the other piece. Less than 20% of European citizens reach a high level of financial literacy, according to the data used by the Commission. That is why the SIU also includes a specific strategy to help people better understand saving, investment, risk and financial planning.
Pensions, the other major reserve of capital
There is a second fundamental difference between Europe and the United States: how retirement is financed.
In countries such as Germany, France, Italy or Spain, public pay-as-you-go systems predominate. Contributions from today’s workers finance today’s pensions, so a large part of that flow is not accumulated in funds invested in the markets.
The contrast is enormous. According to The Economist, US pension funds manage around 43 trillion dollars, close to 140% of GDP. In the EU, the volume stands slightly above 5 trillion, less than 30% of GDP.
The most recent official European figures point in the same direction: in 2026, assets managed by funded pension providers and public reserve funds were equivalent to approximately 32% of EU GDP, far below the United States, Canada or Australia.
However, Europe shows major internal differences. The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark have developed systems in which a significant part of retirement savings is accumulated and invested. The Economist highlights that pension assets are around 145% of GDP in the Netherlands and 110% in Sweden.
The newspaper even suggests that, if the entire EU reached a volume of pension assets equivalent to that of the United States, the stock could approach 30 trillion dollars. It is important to understand this figure correctly: it is a hypothetical exercise, not a forecast or an official European objective.
Europe wants to strengthen supplementary pensions, not replace public ones
The Commission is moving in that direction, although in a much more gradual way than the approach advocated editorially by The Economist.
In November 2025, it presented a package to strengthen supplementary pensions through mechanisms such as automatic enrolment with the option to opt out, better tools to understand accumulated rights, and reforms to occupational pension schemes and the Pan-European Personal Pension Product — PEPP.
The distinction is important: the Commission presents these systems as a complement, not as a replacement for public pensions.
The objective is twofold. On the one hand, to expand savings allocated to retirement. On the other, to create a larger reserve of long-term capital that can be invested in shares, bonds, infrastructure, private companies or other assets.
Mobilising savings is not enough: Europe needs opportunities
There is also an additional difficulty. Getting Europeans to invest more does not automatically mean that this money will finance European companies.
A pension fund or a saver looking for diversification can invest in the United States, Asia or any other market. In fact, that international diversification may be reasonable from the investor’s point of view.
That is why the SIU must also act on the supply side: Europe needs more integrated markets, companies capable of growing, a deeper venture capital ecosystem and enough opportunities to compete for those savings.
This is one of the central ideas in the two analyses by The Economist: creating more European institutional capital will have only a limited effect on the EU economy if the best opportunities continue to be found elsewhere.
Saving and investing serve different functions
From the point of view of each household, there is one final key nuance.
The fact that Europe needs to mobilise more capital does not mean that everyone should invest all their savings. Money set aside for emergencies, upcoming expenses or liquidity needs serves a different purpose and should not be exposed to risks incompatible with that function.
Investment comes into play with the part of wealth that can be held for longer and can assume fluctuations or possible losses in exchange for seeking a higher return.
That is why the issue is not simply turning savers into investors. It is about making it easier for those who can and want to invest to have better tools, more education and more accessible and efficient markets.
Europe already has an enormous capacity to save. The challenge for the Savings and Investments Union is to ensure that a larger share of capital allocated to the long term also helps finance growth, innovation and infrastructure. To achieve this, changing household habits will not be enough: markets, pensions and the opportunities that Europe itself is capable of offering will also have to change.
