Summarize and humanize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in English The European ETF industry celebrates its 25th anniversary today, marking a quarter-century since the first ETFs listed on Deutsche Börse on April 11, 2000. The pioneering products were the LDRS DJ STOXX 50 and LDRS DJ EUROSTOXX 50, sponsored by Merrill Lynch, followed by the iShares FTSE 100 ETF on the London Stock Exchange later that month, according to research firm ETFGI. The ETF landscape has expanded dramatically since those initial listings, with the European market now comprising 3,176 products with 13,378 listings from 124 providers across 29 exchanges in 24 countries, according to ETFGI data. Assets in the industry have reached $2.4 trillion as of March 2025. Despite recent EU-U.S. trade tensions and potential tariff impacts on various market sectors, European ETFs have demonstrated remarkable resilience, attracting record year-to-date net inflows of $99 billion and achieving 30 consecutive months of positive inflows, according to ETFGI’s March 2025 European ETFs industry landscape insights report. During March, equity ETFs gathered net inflows of $23.6 billion, with fixed-income ETFs adding $93.1 million and commodities ETFs contributing $1.2 billion, ETFGI data show. The iShares Core S&P 500 UCITS ETF (CSSPX SW) led individual products with the largest net inflow of $1.43 billion for the month. Among the top-performing ETF categories, gold ETPs showed strong demand with the iShares Physical Gold ETC (SGLN LN) gathering $474.1 million in March, according to ETFGI data. Deutsche Börse, which introduced ETF trading to Europe, announced measures to enhance the ETF marketplace, including a reduction in settlement fees for centrally cleared ETF transactions effective May 1, according to a Friday Deutsche Börse press release. The exchange also recently launched services for retail investors, including automatic price improvements and reduced transaction fees, the announcement stated. The German exchange’s ETF segment began the anniversary year strongly with its best quarter on record, with average monthly trading volume in the first quarter of 2025 coming in 61.3% higher than the monthly average in 2024, according to Deutsche Börse. “ETFs have developed into one of the most important investment products and are increasingly establishing themselves as a component of private retirement planning and long-term wealth accumulation,” Stephan Kraus, head of the ETF and ETP segment at Deutsche Börse, said in the release. “With our new set of measures, we are making a further contribution to increasing the efficiency and transparency of ETF trading on Xetra.”
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