Pending the European Commission’s new Action Plan on Capital Markets Union (CMU), the European Parliament launched its own reflection with the publication of the draft own-initiative report by Spanish MEP Isabel Benjumea (EPP) on 17 June.
All in all, the rapporteur is of the opinion that the actions taken so far to achieve the CMU are “moving in the right direction”, but that there is still a lot of work to be done in terms of the precision, efficiency and simplification of the measures adopted.
Mrs Benjumea notes that “the social and economic crisis resulting from Covid-19 will have a particularly negative impact on SMEs and retail savers” and believes that “the EU’s response to Covid-19 through the European Recovery Plan should provide a large injection of capital in order to increase European enterprises’ access to finance”.
The draft report, which has not yet been discussed in Parliament’s ECON Committee, makes a series of recommendations, several of which are already contained in the report of the High Level Forum on CMU (see EUROPE 12503/13).
The text focuses on improving capital market financing, especially for SMEs. In addition, it encourages the creation of a large pan-European private fund to support SMEs, an “Initial Public Offering (IPO) Fund”.
It also calls for the acceleration of the development of EU venture capital markets, including tax incentive schemes for such investments.
The text also asks the Commission to clearly differentiate between professional and retail investors and to consider the introduction of a category of semi-professional investors to better reflect the reality of participation in financial markets.
Mrs Benjumea also believes that financial education is a good tool to further engage retail investors in the markets and should therefore be integrated into school curricula in the Member States.
The text also recognises that the digitisation of financial services can be “a catalyst for the mobilisation of capital in the EU” and calls for a European framework for cyber security.
Finally, the rapporteur calls on the Commission to take steps to strengthen the international role and use of the euro and to complete the CMU, Economic and Monetary Union and Banking Union.
See the draft report: https://bit.ly/3erPxsg (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)