On Thursday, 21 December, the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) adopted legal acts, soon to be published in the Official Journal of the EU, on the regular five-yearly adjustment to the ECB’s capital key, which dated back to 1 February 2020, and the contributions of the various national central banks (NCBs).
The new capital key will come into force on 1 January 2024.
The ECB adjusts the NCBs’ shares in its capital every 5 years and whenever there is a change in the number of NCBs contributing to the capital. Each NCB’s share in the ECB’s capital is based on two types of data provided by the European Commission: the share of each NCB’s respective Member State in the total population and gross domestic product (GDP) of the EU. Both of these [categories of] data are weighted identically.
The adjustment will not change the total amount of the ECB’s subscribed capital, which stands at €10,825,007,069.61. NCBs will proceed to transfer capital shares among themselves so that the distribution of the shares corresponds to the new key.
Seventeen NCBs will then see their share in the ECB’s capital increase, nine will see this share decrease, and for one NCB—Latvia’s—the rounded share will remain unchanged.
Voting rights on the Governing Council
The adjustment will not alter the allocation of NCB governors into two groups, which was introduced for the purposes of implementing the system of rotating voting rights.
In fact, this allocation into two groups is carried out, in this context, among euro-area Member States based on the share in the gross domestic product of the euro-area states as well as based on their share in the total aggregated balance sheet of the euro-area Member States’ monetary financial institutions.
Link to the new key: https://aeur.eu/f/a8a (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)