The French, German and Dutch Finance Ministers proposed to set up a high-level working group on the Capital Markets Union (CMU), in a letter signed on Thursday 16 May in the margins of the Eurogroup meeting (see EUROPE 12257/6).
“Challenges in the form of climate and technological change, as well as the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union... make the need for a well-designed capital market for the EU to become an urgent strategic issue”, they explain.
It is to initiate this reflection that the three ministers propose to create a high-level expert working group between the twenty-seven Member States, which would be composed of “European personalities, which are recognised for their expertise in the field of Capital Markets”.
The composition of the group would be very diversified in order to represent the point of view of SMEs, investors, financial intermediaries, market infrastructures and experts in financial innovation.
Upon his arrival at the Ecofin Council meeting on Friday 17 May, Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra said that this joint proposal was a real “breakthrough”. “It is very important to take a next step on the Capital Markets Union, that is one of the missing links in the financial infrastructure in Europe”, he said.
In concrete terms, the group would be responsible for identifying the strengths and weaknesses of capital markets in the EU and identifying the various ways in which the Union could build the capacity to finance the growth of its economy in a robust and sustainable way, with an emphasis on financial innovation.
“The group's work will be careful not to interfere with the ongoing negotiations on Brexit or the current European legislative agenda and not to be influenced by competition between financial markets”, the letter from the three countries also states.
Ultimately, the work should feed into the European institutions' roadmap for the European Commission's next mandate. The three ministers suggest that an interim report be submitted by 31 July 2019 at the latest, before a final report containing recommendations is due at the end of September 2019.
See the letter: http://bit.ly/2QefWP2. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)