The European Commissioner for Financial Services, Mairead McGuinness, who was in Athens on Wednesday 29 May for the Hellenic Capital Market Commission Conference, said that it was “imperative” for the European Union to mobilise private finance in order to be able to finance the environmental transition.
“We have marked last year 30 years of the single market, four freedoms, but we have not completed the freedom of movement of capital. And this is something that, if we can achieve it – and we must achieve it – can unlock huge sums of money to invest in a more sustainable economy and society”, she said on Wednesday morning.
Ms McGuinness assured that the European Commission was pushing for the completion of the Capital Markets Union (see EUROPE 13414/15).
“We have all the tools in place”, she said, referring to progress on the EU taxonomy (see EUROPE 13140/1), the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (see EUROPE 13134/14), the Sustainable Finance Disclosures Regulation (see EUROPE 13069/25) and EU green bonds (see EUROPE 13305/16). (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)