Against this background, and bearing in mind that most countries near the euro area are small in economic and financial terms (compared with Asian and Latin American countries), it is no great surprise that the euro’s share in global foreign exchange reserves is still rather small, although it has risen gradually from roughly 15% to almost 20%.
Available evidence suggests that several central banks of the new EU Member States, candidate and potential candidate countries intervene in foreign exchange markets mainly by using the euro as intervention currency.