On Wednesday 19 March, the European Commission presented its strategy for the creation of a ‘Savings and Investment Union’ (SIU). Ten years after launching its Capital Markets Union initiative, the EU institution is adopting a more holistic approach, covering the entire financial sector: not just capital markets, but also the banking sector.
Announced by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in her policy directions for her second term of office, the project is one of the main commitments of the responsible European Commissioner, Portugal’s Maria Luís Albuquerque.
Faced with massive financing needs for the ‘green’ and digital transitions, innovation and, more recently, defence, the measures presented by the Commission on Wednesday aim to channel some €10,000 billion of savings into productive investments.
“With today’s proposal for a Savings and Investment Union we are achieving a double win. Households will have more and safer opportunities to invest in capital markets and increase their wealth. At the same time, businesses will have easier access to capital to innovate, grow and create good jobs in Europe”, Ursula von der Leyen promised on Wednesday.
To harness the “potential” of the vast savings available and combine them with the need for strategic financing, the European Commission has unveiled a ‘roadmap’ based on the needs of citizens, businesses, market integration and market supervision.
Financial literacy & retail investors. A financial education strategy is due to be proposed in the summer of 2025. The Commission believes that levels of financial literacy in the EU are too low, and would like to encourage Europeans to invest and stimulate the markets to make attractive products available.
In addition, the European Commission will develop a European model for savings and investment accounts and products for retail investors based on existing national best practices. Recommendations to EU Member States on the tax treatment of these schemes are due to be issued in July.
Pensions. Additional retirement savings solutions need to be found for public pension systems, which are in danger of becoming unsustainable as a result of demographic ageing, falling birth rates and longer life expectancy in Europe.
For example, the European Commission plans to review the existing frameworks for institutions for occupational retirement provision (IORPs) and the pan-European Individual Retirement Savings Product (PEPP) from next October.
Recommendations on auto-enrolment (see EUROPE 13598/27), pension monitoring systems and pension dashboards are expected to be presented at the end of the year.
Integration and supervision. Next autumn, the European Commission will draw up a legislative package on EU capital market infrastructures, aimed in particular at further removing barriers to cross-border activities and reducing operational barriers encountered by asset managers.
In terms of supervision, the transposition of certain supervisory tasks from national authorities to European authorities is expected to be proposed, going beyond simple convergence.
“Convergence is a tool that has shown its merits, but also its limits. Tolerating duplications, divergencies, or supervisory inefficiencies adds even more to the cost of investing in the EU and erodes stakeholders’ trust”, said Ms Albuquerque at a press conference on Wednesday.
“We believe that for some cross-border large actors, it is more efficient to have this supervision done centrally. That is the case for large trading and post-trading infrastructure for some large cross-border asset management groups. But also for new activities, we can talk obviously about crypto”, she pointed out.
Companies. The Commission also wants to diversify sources of funding, in particular by encouraging more investment in equities rather than systematic recourse to bank loans.
“We will address barriers for insurers, banks, and pension funds to invest in equity, including building in venture capital”, announced Ms Albuquerque.
The European Commission plans to revise EU rules on securitisation, focusing on due diligence, transparency and prudential requirements for banks and insurers. A revision of the regulation on European venture capital funds (‘EuVECA’) has been announced for the summer of 2026.
Although the Commission announced on 29 January its intention to propose a 28th legal regime to provide innovative companies with a single, harmonised framework of European rules, this initiative has not been developed further in the context of the SIU.
“The exact scope of the 28th regime has not been agreed yet”, a senior EU official said on Tuesday.
However, EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday are expected to push the Commission to propose such a regime with a view to taking decisive action as early as 2026 (see other news).
See the Commission communication: https://aeur.eu/f/g95 (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)