The euro touches $1.1161, its weakest print since May 2025

The euro fell to $1.1161 in Asian hours on Monday, its weakest level since May 2025, and was last down 0.68 percent at $1.1176, Reuters reported from Singapore. It also lost 0.5 percent against the Swiss franc and 0.39 percent against sterling. The move is the fifth pressure point in a row: four straight weekly declines, then a Monday gap lower. The dollar rose with it, even after softer US jobs data had taken some of the edge off near-term expectations of a Federal Reserve rate rise.

France is the named source of the slide. French bond futures dipped 0.22 percent and sat close to the record lows they have hugged for days. German Bund futures rose 0.1 percent. That split is the contagion tell. When investors want euro-area safety they buy Germany and sell France. The gap between the two futures on Monday was small in points and clear in direction. A currency that falls while the region's benchmark bond is bid, and the region's second market is not, is a currency trading a fiscal story rather than a growth story.

The fiscal story is France's debt and the calendar. A snap election is not the French event on this week's European page. Spain called one. France's next presidential election is next year, and traders have treated budget promises from the current government as weak because a change of power is close. Reuters quoted a market participant making that point in plain terms: promises made now are not very credible with a change of power coming soon. The euro does not need a French election date this month to price that doubt. It needs a bond market that has already moved, which it has.

Oil is the other input, and it is not a French story. A bond rout in recent weeks drove global borrowing costs to multi-decade highs, with French debt hit as investors priced inflation risk from higher oil. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed on Iran's terms. Higher crude feeds European inflation and European energy bills at the same time as Paris is trying to hold a fiscal line. The euro's four-week slide sits on that combination: a French debt market that no longer gets the benefit of the doubt, and an energy price that the European Central Bank cannot talk down.

The jobs data in the United States would, on another Monday, have been the lead. Soft employment numbers cooled bets on a near-term Fed rise. A softer path for US rates usually leans against the dollar. It did not on Monday. Safe-haven demand and higher yields elsewhere held the dollar up, Reuters reported. The euro's drop is therefore not a dollar story that happens to show up in the euro. It is a euro story that overrode a dollar negative. That is a sharper signal than a routine risk-off day.

The $1.1161 print is the number that matters for the next session, because it is a low, not a close. A currency that touches a 17-month low in Asia and finishes the morning only a little above it has not rejected the level. Traders will watch whether European hours push it through or whether Bund strength pulls it back. The franc loss of 0.5 percent says some of the selling was a move into Switzerland, not only into dollars. The sterling loss of 0.39 percent says it was not only a dollar bid. The euro was offered against three havens at once.

What would stop the move is a French fiscal paper that the bond market believes, or an energy price that falls because Hormuz reopens. Neither arrived on Monday. Qalibaf's line from Tehran, that the strait stays shut until seven June conditions are met, is the energy constraint. Paris has not published a new budget path that futures have rewarded. The ECB has not said it will buy French debt. Reuters noted the fear that the central bank could be pulled into that role if the sell-off spreads, a comparison traders are making with the debt crisis of more than a decade ago. Monday's prices do not show that spread yet. They show France down and Germany up.

The takeaway for anyone pricing the week is the level and the split. The euro traded $1.1161, a May 2025 low, and sat at $1.1176 with a 0.68 percent loss. French futures were soft near their lows. Bund futures were bid. The dollar did not need a strong jobs print to rise. Until one of those four facts changes, the 17-month low is the reference, not a spike that already failed.