European Central Bank in the context of "European Union institutions"

The institutions of the European Union are the seven principal decision-making bodies of the European Union and Euratom governed under the Treaties of the European Union and European Union law. They are, as listed in Article 13 of the Treaty on the European Union:

• the European Parliament,
• the European Council (of heads of state or government),
• the Council of the European Union (of member state ministers, a council for each area of responsibility),
• the European Commission,
• the Court of Justice of the European Union,
• the European Central Bank and
• the European Court of Auditors.

Institutions are distinct from both advisory bodies to the European Union and agencies of the European Union.

The main bodies of the European Union and Euratom are:

• the seven principal institutions of the European Union, including the one which is an international entity (the European Central Bank)
• other bodies of the EU established through primary (treaty) legislation, either as international law bodies (the European Investment Bank Group entities, the European University Institute, the European Stability Mechanism and the Unified Patent Court) or as bodies without juridical personality (the European Ombudsman, the advisory bodies to the European Union)
• the agencies, decentralised independent bodies and joint undertakings of the European Union and Euratom, which are bodies of the EU established as juridical persons through secondary legislation,
• other bodies of the EU established through secondary legislation, which lack juridical personality (e.g. European Data Protection Supervisor)
• the inter-institutional services

Apart from them, some several other bodies exist.

The European Union and Euratom have agencies, decentralised independent bodies, corporate bodies and joint undertakings which are established as juridical persons through secondary EU legislation and tasked with a specific narrow field of work. They are a part of the wider set of bodies of the European Union and Euratom and are therefore distinct from:

• international law juridical persons established through primary (treaty) legislation, either as an EU institution (the European Central Bank) or as an EU body of another type (such as the European Investment Bank Group entities, the European University Institute, the European Stability Mechanism or the Unified Patent Court)
• other EU institutions
• other EU bodies lacking juridical personality, including the advisory bodies, the independent offices held by a single person (European Ombudsman, European Data Protection Supervisor), and the (non-independent, auxiliary) EU inter-institutional services, regardless of whether established through treaty or through secondary legislation
• the pan-EU organisational forms which are not considered constituent bodies of the EU or Euratom, regardless of whether possessing juridical personality (European Research Infrastructure Consortium, European political party, European political foundation, European grouping of territorial cooperation, Societas Europaea, Societas Cooperativa Europaea) or lacking it (European economic interest grouping)

The euro convergence criteria (also known as the Maastricht criteria) are the criteria European Union member states are required to meet to enter the third stage of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and adopt the euro as their currency. The four main criteria, which actually comprise five criteria as the "fiscal criterion" consists of both a "debt criterion" and a "deficit criterion", are based on Article 140 (ex article 121.1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

Full EMU membership is only open to EU member states. However, the European microstates of Andorra, Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican City, which are not members of the EU, have signed monetary agreements with the EU which allow them officially to adopt the euro and issue their own variant of euro coins. These states had all previously used one of the eurozone currencies replaced by the euro, or a currency pegged to one of them. These states are not members of the eurozone and do not get a seat in the European Central Bank (ECB) or the Eurogroup.

The seven institutions of the European Union (EU) are seated in four different cities, which are Brussels (Belgium), Frankfurt am Main (Germany), Luxembourg (Luxembourg) and Strasbourg (France), rather than being concentrated in a single capital city. The EU agencies and other bodies are located all across the union, but usually not fixed in the treaties. The Hague is the only exception, as the fixed seat of the Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol). Luxembourg City is the EU capital that can lay claim to having the most of the seven EU institutions based wholly or partly upon its territory, with only the European Council and European Central Bank not having a presence in the city. Over the years, Brussels has become the EU's political hub, with the College of the Commissioners — the European Commission's politically accountable executive — and the European Council both meeting at their Brussels-based headquarters, and the European Parliament and Council of the EU holding the majority of their meetings annually within the city. This has led media to describe it as the de facto "capital of the EU."

The seats have been a matter of political dispute since the states first failed to reach an agreement at the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952. However, a final agreement between member states was reached in 1992, and later attached to the Treaty of Amsterdam.

Frankfurt am Main, commonly referred to simply as Frankfurt, is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 778,589 inhabitants as of 2025 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the foreland of the Taunus on its namesake Main, the city forms a continuous conurbation with Offenbach am Main; its urban area has a population of over 2.7 million. Frankfurt is the heart of the larger Rhine-Main metropolitan region, which has a population of more than 5.8 million and is Germany's second-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr region. Home to the European Central Bank, the city serves as one of the four institutional seats of the European Union (alongside Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg). Frankfurt is classified by the GaWC as an Alpha-rated world city.

Frankfurt was a city state, the Free City of Frankfurt, for nearly five centuries, and was one of the most important cities of the Holy Roman Empire, as a site of Imperial coronations; it lost its sovereignty upon the collapse of the empire in 1806, regained it in 1815 and then lost it again in 1866, when it was annexed (though neutral) by the Kingdom of Prussia. It has been part of the state of Hesse since 1945. Frankfurt is culturally, ethnically and religiously diverse, with half of its population, and a majority of its young people, having a migrant background. A quarter of the population consists of foreign nationals, including many expatriates. In 2015, Frankfurt was home to 1,909 ultra high-net-worth individuals, the sixth-highest number of any city.