On Monday 31 March, a large number of MEPs urged the EU institutions and above all Member States to achieve concrete results in integrating capital markets through the savings and investments union (SIU) project.
“We’ve been going round in circles for ten years” when the sticking points are well known, said Markus Ferber (EPP, German) during a debate in Parliament’s plenary session, citing in particular the lack of harmonisation between Member States’ tax systems and bankruptcy law. “All initiatives are blocked” at the level of national capitals, he said, criticising the absence of the Polish presidency of the EU Council from the debate.
On behalf of the S&D group, France’s Aurore Lalucq felt that Europeans should stop being “stupid enough” to finance the US economy, with “€300 billion” of European savings invested across the Atlantic every year. “It’s time for Member States to stop blocking” the SIU project, she added, even if, in her view, the initiative expected to stimulate the financial securitisation market is “irrelevant”.
On the contrary, Giovanni Crosetto (ECR, Italian) advocated reducing the prudential requirements governing this financial technique, which allows banks to resell repackaged loans in the form of financial securities on the capital markets. He also advocated the outright withdrawal of the draft ‘FIDA’ regulation regarding the use of financial data (see EUROPE 13611/15).
Dutch liberal Anouk Van Brug called for tangible “facts”, in particular to facilitate the development of venture capital to finance competitive European businesses. And Damian Boeselager (Greens/EFA, German) saw “enormous potential” in the SIU project, provided that national decision-makers are up to the challenge of needing to invest in the economy’s decarbonisation and rearming Member States.
Agreeing to mobilise more private capital to finance the economy in accordance with the ‘Budapest Declaration on the New European Competitiveness Deal’ approved by the EU27 at the end of 2024 (see EUROPE 13521/2), Enikő Győri (PfE, Hungarian) nevertheless warned against the “bad policies from ‘Brussels’” and called for respect for national competences.
Gaetano Pedullà (The Left, Italian), for his part, strongly criticised the capital markets union, which, in his view, conceals “a serious danger for European citizens”, namely that of shifting the risks associated with investments “from the capital markets to the savings markets”, especially when these investments fuel “a dangerous war economy”.
Earlier, European Commissioner for Financial Services Maria Luís Albuquerque outlined the main measures identified in the Commission’s recent communication on the savings and investments union (see EUROPE 13603/5).
She wants to put citizens first by prioritising measures that would enable households to make part of their savings grow in the European Union. She also spoke in favour of there being sufficiently large and diversified banks across the single market. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)