Fact-check: The EU will not 'confiscate' Europeans' savings to spend on defence

euronews (in English)

Fact-check: The EU will not 'confiscate' Europeans' savings to spend on defence  A fresh push to incentivise Europeans to invest in EU assets has been weaponised in an online disinformation campaign. Euroverify investigates.  READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/04/02/fact-check-the-eu-will-not-confiscate-europeans-savings-to-spend-on-defence  Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages

Transcript

00:00No, the EU is not spending your savings on defence.

00:08Social media users have been urging people to move their money out of European banks,

00:14claiming the European Commission is looking to confiscate as much as 10 trillion euros

00:19in citizens' savings to spend on defence.

00:22We verified this claim and found it to be completely false.

00:26Yet the warnings are circulating widely on X, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube,

00:32fuelled by misleading articles such as this one from Russian state news agency TASS.

00:37The disinformation campaign seems to have been engineered in early March

00:41after the European Commission previewed a plan to incentivise Europeans

00:45to invest their savings in EU assets.

00:48Today, we have some 10 trillion euros of citizens' savings in low-yield deposit accounts.

00:55Europeans are among the best savers in the world,

00:58yet they are not getting significant returns on their savings.

01:01The plan, unveiled a couple of weeks later, is known as the Savings and Investment Union.

01:07It encourages Europeans to channel savings into the EU's capital markets,

01:12for example by offering tax incentives.

01:15The Savings and Investment Union has as a goal that the citizens get more and better return on their money,

01:21but also that the start-ups, the businesses have access to the much-needed capital.

01:27So the intention is to make sure citizens get returns on savings

01:32that are currently sitting idle in low-yield accounts,

01:35while also freeing up the capital the EU needs to invest in sectors of the future

01:40and become more competitive.

01:42Those investments could be made in the defence sector,

01:45a priority as the EU looks to ramp up its defence industrial base.

01:50But in fact, the EU cannot in any way access Europeans' personal savings

01:56and is not planning to do so.

Category

Transcript

Recommended