On Monday 9 October, the President of Jacques Delors Institute and former President of the Italian Council of Ministers, Enrico Letta, met with members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) to discuss his high-level report on the future of the single market, which he is due to submit in March 2024. The question of completing the capital markets union (see EUROPE 13261/15) was central to the discussions.
“The single market, in terms of free movement, is a success story. Regarding the movement of people, it’s a success. (...) But the worst mark would go to the movement of capital. It is very difficult to have a true single market without a true capital markets union. The latter is a real driver of competitiveness and will be one of the pillars of my work”, Mr Letta assured.
“This will be the most complicated chapter of your work. When we talk about a single market, we can’t talk about a capital markets union, there isn’t one”, reacted Eva-Maria Poptcheva (Renew Europe, Spanish), regretting the significant gap that remains between the EU and other countries when it comes to financing.
For Mr Letta, who, as the work on his report is still in progress, spoke in relatively general terms during the discussions, the important thing will be to speed up discussions regarding the capital markets union, “which was not considered a priority before, but has become one and should be considered as such”. However, the Jacques Delors Institute President assured that he would give a “positive assessment” to the action programme proposed by the European Commission in 2020 to better integrate national capital markets into the single market.
To achieve this, Mr Letta said that the various aspects of the Listing Act proposal (see EUROPE 13190/28) were “very important”. The European Commission presented this legislative proposal on 7 December last year. On 30 August, the rapporteur for the dossier, Alfred Sant (S&D, Maltese), expressed his view that the European Parliament had “fallen behind schedule” on this matter and that “the result [was] not there” (see EUROPE 13239/14).
The issue of supervision also came up several times during the discussions, at the request of MEPs including Danuta Hübner (EPP, Polish).
On this point, Enrico Letta shared the view of several MEPs, who described supervision as “necessary” in order to “see the link between what is happening at bank level and the capital markets union”. “It is important to use the right toolbox, and I’m going to try and work on that. I will be an ambassador for this theme”, he concluded. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)