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.
The EU executive is not looking to "confiscate" up to €10 trillion in money stashed away in European citizens' savings accounts to spend on defence, despite a claim circulating widely on social media.
Euroverify has detected the false allegation on X, TikTok, Facebook and YouTube, fuelled by an article published on the Russian state news agency TASS.
The disinformation campaign falsely accuses Brussels of wanting to dip into taxpayers' savings to "fund its war machine" and "militarise the EU."
The unfounded claims seem to have been pieced together following an announcement made by the Brussels-based EU executive on 19 March.
On that day, the Commission unveiled a new proposal for the Savings and Investment Union (SIU) – a rebrand of the former Capital Markets Union – in a fresh push to encourage European citizens to invest their savings in EU assets rather than leaving them sitting in bank accounts.
The proposal aims to centralise market supervision and offer tax incentives to savers. In fact, the Commission's goal is to ensure savers generate more revenues while allowing the bloc itself to make much-needed strategic investments.
The executive says some €10 trillion euros of citizens' savings are currently in low-yield savings accounts, and that €300 billion of those are invested in non-EU markets each year.
In a speech in Frankfurt on 6 March, the European Commissioner for Financial Services Maria Luís Albuquerque said, previewing the proposal: "Europeans are among the best savers in the world, yet they are not getting significant returns on their savings," she added. "This is simply not fair."
"The Savings and Investment Union has as a goal that citizens get more and better return on their money, but also that (...) businesses have access to the much needed capital," European Commission President Urusla von der Leyen said at a summit of EU leaders on 20 March.
In no way does this mean the EU executive would access citizens' private savings accounts. The bloc in fact has some of the strongest regulations in the world designed to protect savings accounts.
Why are users claiming savings will be spent on defence?The establishment of a robust European Savings and Investments Union is considered pivotal for strengthening the bloc's competitiveness and freeing up investments in critical sectors, including in defence.
It could free capital for small and medium-sized business as well as larger enterprises to funnel more investments into strategic projects, including to ramp up the continent's defence industrial base.
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