ECB adopts new capital key

3 December 2018

• Five-yearly adjustment based on population and GDP data from European Commission
• 16 national central banks to have higher share, 12 lower share
• No change in system of rotating voting rights

The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) adopted legal acts on the regular five-yearly adjustment to its capital key and the contributions paid by the national central banks (NCBs) of the European Union. The new key for subscription to the ECB’s capital will enter into force on 1 January 2019.

The shares of the NCBs in the ECB’s capital are weighted according to the share of the respective Member States in the total population and gross domestic product of the European Union (EU), in equal measure.*

The weightings are based on data provided by the European Commission. NCBs will transfer capital shares among themselves to the extent necessary to ensure that the distribution of the shares corresponds to the adjusted key.

Following the latest review, 16 central banks will have a higher share in the ECB’s capital than before and 12 central banks will have a lower share. The new distribution of the NCBs’ shares is set out in the table below. The total amount of the subscribed capital of the ECB remains unchanged at €10,825,007,069.61. The relevant ECB decisions are available on the ECB’s website and will be published in the Official Journal of the European Union in due course. The General Council of the ECB contributed to the decision-making process, in line with the Statute of the ESCB.

The system under which NCB Governors take turns in holding voting rights on the Governing Council provides that the Governors of the euro area NCBs are allocated to two groups according to the size of their Member States’ financial sector and gross domestic product, as referred to above. These data need to be recalculated whenever the five-yearly capital key adjustment takes place. On the basis of the new calculations, the allocation of Governors into groups as of 1 January 2019 remains unchanged.

Distribution of the ECB’s capital as of 1 January 2019

Numbers may not add up owing to rounding.

For media queries, please contact Peter Ehrlich, tel.: +49 69 1344 8320.

Notes:

*Article 29.1 of the Protocol on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank sets out how the capital key is weighted.

Annex:

Comparison of capital key, Eurosystem key and banknote allocation key