Euro-area sovereign bond yield spreads have tightened to depths last observed after the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse, but market participants say achieving a single low spread across the bloc will be difficult without further institutional reform. The premium that Southern European sovereigns pay over benchmark German Bunds has fallen almost continuously since late 2023, a move tied to market expectations that the European Central Bank will reduce interest rates.
Despite the recent contraction in spreads, investors see limited scope for additional compression to a unified level that economists argue would be needed to create a deeper, more liquid euro-area bond market - an outcome viewed as important for the euro's international standing.
Market moves and drivers
The yield advantage for Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece over safe-haven German Bunds currently sits at about 53 basis points, 37 bps, 24 bps and 43 bps, respectively. Those levels place the euro-area periphery near the narrowest differentials since before the global financial crisis, although in 2007 spreads were, in some cases, even tighter: Italy around 22 bps, Spain and Portugal roughly 5 bps, and Greece about 25 bps.
Investors point to several forces behind the recent tightening. Expectations of ECB policy easing - supported by the euro's relative strength and market pricing - have helped compress yields. In addition, the EU's pandemic-era Next Generation fund and the prospect of rising defence expenditure across member states have raised hopes for more collective borrowing, a dynamic that has underpinned southern euro-area bonds and that analysts expect could persist through 2027.
Geopolitics and fiscal choices
Geopolitical shifts are also reshaping Europe’s fiscal and security calculus. Under President Donald Trump, the United States has been viewed as a less predictable partner on trade and security, with explicit messaging that Europe should shoulder a greater share of its own defence costs. That push toward higher military spending - and attendant increases in government borrowing led by Germany - is feeding the broader debate about joint debt issuance.
Markets briefly registered higher spreads in January when a politically charged threat to take over Greenland surfaced, but the move was short-lived and spreads retreated soon after.
Institutional reform as the limiting factor
Portfolio manager Konstantin Veit of PIMCO cautions that pre-crisis compression in some spreads reflected more than fundamentals. "It wasn’t always about fundamentals, (some) spreads were close to zero (before the GFC) because there was a hope that over time, the monetary union would evolve into a fully-fledged fiscal and political union," he said, referring to the 2008 global financial crisis. Veit added that while he remains constructive on peripheral spreads, "compression potential might be limited without improvements on the institutional side." He pointed specifically to the need for further progress on the banking union, capital markets union, common issuance and a shared fiscal capacity - reforms that ECB President Christine Lagarde has said are necessary for the euro to obtain greater international prominence.
Despite current tight spreads, economists and strategists remain sceptical that broader joint issuance will materialise quickly. Germany's opposition to greater shared debt is a decisive political constraint, and some expect that meaningful steps toward deeper fiscal integration would likely occur only in response to a stress event.
Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro research at ING, said: "I think more integration will only come in a stress scenario, and we’re not yet in a stress scenario." He warned that a slowdown in the economy could raise debt-to-GDP ratios in Southern Europe, tempering expectations for durable convergence.
Politics, perception and market positioning
Political developments inside member states have shifted perceptions of sovereign risk. Nations long viewed as politically fragile, such as Italy, have recently demonstrated greater stability, while German politics has shown increased volatility as parties with eurosceptic views gain strength. Observers say the market's framing of sovereign risk is evolving as a result.
Rohan Khanna, head of euro rates strategy at Barclays, said political risk in Italy and other southern countries is "the part I’m least concerned about." His greater worry is how markets will treat Italy in a post-Next Generation EU world. Barclays expects spreads to remain in a tight range, but sees less scope for a pronounced decline in Italian spreads compared with other southern countries.
Outlook
Analysts generally expect that the combination of prospective ECB rate reductions, the stabilising influence of joint pandemic-era borrowing and the need for increased defence spending will keep spreads relatively stable through the near term. Yet, they also stress that substantial further narrowing toward a unified, ultra-low spread will likely depend on institutional reforms that remain politically challenging.
For now, the market finds itself in a nuanced position: spreads are close to post-Lehman lows and appear to be supported by both policy expectations and evolving fiscal arrangements, but a stronger, more integrated framework for the euro area would be required to make even tighter convergence sustainable over the long run.