Geopolitics and foreign holdings of euro area government debt

This special feature uses granular data from the ECB’s Securities Holdings Statistics (SHS) to investigate whether foreign holdings of euro area securities react to geopolitics. Where similar information is available from the US Treasury, a comparison is made with respect to foreign holdings of US Treasury securities. The analysis reveals several key insights. First, foreign investors hold almost a quarter of both euro area and US government debt. While these total foreign holdings are concentrated in countries geopolitically aligned with the West, foreign official sector holdings of euro area government debt are mainly held by non-aligned countries. Second, official foreign investors’ holdings of euro area government debt have remained generally resilient since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The decline in holdings of countries (excluding Russia) that are not geopolitically aligned with the West, which have dropped by 5% relative to pre-invasion levels, has so far been contained, highlighting the importance of upholding the rule of law. Econometric estimates suggest that geopolitical non-alignment explains at least part of this decline. These patterns still hold, even after correcting for geographic biases in international financial statistics to the extent possible. As the decline is small, the impact on euro area bond yields has been very limited thus far. JEL Classification: F30, F60