DUBLIN — Euro zone countries are integrating faster with the United States than with each other, European Central Bank Vice-President Boris Vujcic said on Monday, arguing that the trend leaves the bloc more vulnerable to economic shocks at a time of rising geopolitical tensions, Reuters reported.

Source: Reuters

Citing ECB research, Vujcic said estimated barriers to cross-border equity investment between the euro zone and the United States have fallen by a quarter since 2014, more than twice as much as barriers within the euro area. 'Strikingly, we are integrating faster with the United States than with each other,' he said in a speech at a financial conference in Dublin, hosted by the Central Bank of Ireland.

Source: ECB — speech by Boris Vujcic, Dublin, 2 Nov 2026

~25 pointsFall since 2014 in estimated tariff-equivalent frictions on cross-border equity holdings between the euro area and the US
~12 pointsFall over the same period within the euro area itself — roughly half as much
67% / 95%ECB-estimated tariff equivalents of Europe's internal barriers, for goods and for services
5–10%Share of a shock absorbed by capital markets in the euro area, where the overall absorbed share is around 30% — against around 70% in the US

Why fragmentation is a resilience problem, not just a growth problem

In the full speech, titled 'Integrated, open and resilient: Europe's strengths in a fragmenting world', Vujcic argued that geopolitical shocks — Russia's war against Ukraine, the Middle East conflict, tariffs and export restrictions — are now driving inflation and financial risk more often, and that Europe cannot shield itself by pulling back from the world. The EU imports 57% of its energy and almost all of its oil and gas, he noted, so exposure is only half the story; the other half is how well a shock is absorbed and shared.

Source: ECB — speech by Boris Vujcic, Dublin, 2 Nov 2026

ECB research shows firms with mainly domestic shareholders cut investment about 20% more than peers with international investor bases during the COVID-19 shock, Reuters reported — evidence, Vujcic said, that Europe's fragmented capital markets make the economy less resilient, with European savings increasingly funding US companies instead: US venture capital funds invest around six times as much as EU-based funds.

His prescription was integration Europe controls itself: complete the single market, finish the banking union with a European deposit insurance scheme, build the savings and investments union, and press ahead with the digital euro and European payments infrastructure. Reducing internal barriers to goods and services by just 2% could, in the long run, offset the projected impact of higher US tariffs on euro area GDP, estimated at around 0.7 percentage points between 2025 and 2027, he said. 'Openness, integration and resilience are not competing goals. They reinforce one another.'