Today’s changes in interest rates saw the three-month Euribor rise to 2.369%, positioning it below the six-month Euribor rate of 2.375% and above the 12-month rate of 2.346%. The six-month Euribor, which became the most commonly used benchmark in Portugal for variable-rate housing loans starting January 2024, decreased slightly to 2.375%, down by 0.011 percentage points.
Data from Banco de Portugal for January showed that six-month Euribor accounted for 37.75% of the outstanding stock of variable-rate mortgages for permanent housing. The 12-month and three-month Euribor rates represented 32.52% and 25.57%, respectively. Over the 12-month term, the Euribor rate fell to 2.346%, a decrease of 0.008 percentage points.
Conversely, the three-month Euribor, which has remained below 2.5% since March 14, rose today to 2.369%, an increase of 0.004 percentage points, following a decline over ten consecutive sessions.
The three-month Euribor forms part of the calculation for the base rate of Savings Certificates, determined monthly on the penultimate business day to be valid the following month. This rate cannot exceed 2.50% or fall below 0%. The gross interest rate for new subscriptions of Savings Certificates, Series F, was again set at 2.500% in March 2025.
Monthly averages for Euribor in February showed a decrease for both three-month and six-month terms. The 12-month Euribor, which had increased in January for the first time after a nine-month decline, also fell in February.
As a result, February’s average Euribor rates dropped by 0.177 percentage points to 2.525% for three months, 0.154 points to 2.460% for six months, and 0.118 points to 2.407% for 12 months. As anticipated by markets, the European Central Bank (ECB) decided in March to reduce key interest rates for the fifth time in six months, this time by a quarter point to 2.5%.
ECB President Christine Lagarde indicated that the institution is ready to pause interest rate cuts in April. The next monetary policy meeting of the ECB is scheduled for April 16-17 in Frankfurt. Euribor rates are established by calculating the average of the rates at which a group of 19 eurozone banks is willing to lend to each other in the interbank market.
