On Thursday 16 January, Enrico Letta and Christian Noyer, authors of the reports ‘Much more than a market’ and ‘Developing European capital markets to finance the future’ (see EUROPE 13399/26), presented their arguments in favour of a Union of capital markets to the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Financial Affairs.
Mr Letta spoke of the current momentum, which he believes is helping to relaunch the project of a real integration of capital markets, initiated in 2014 but overshadowed at the time by Brexit.
“We are all aware that the EU needs major investments in the future. These investments can only come from the participation of private capital with public capital”, asserted the former Italian Prime Minister, preferring to speak of a ‘Savings and Investment Union’.
He added, four days before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, that “the gap we have today with the United States, the difficulty we have in competing with the United States and China, is due to the fragmentation of the capital market”.
According to Mr Noyer, the EU lags significantly behind in securitisation, “not only in comparison with the United States, but also with other major economies such as Canada, Japan and Australia”. The former governor of the Banque de France estimated that with an approach comparable to that of these “great economic powers”, nearly €500 billion could be generated annually in Europe.
A public consultation on the European securitisation framework was launched by the European Commission last October (see EUROPE 13501/27). (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)