The European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) has published a draft report “on facilitating the financing of investments and reforms to boost European competitiveness and creating a capital markets union”. It presents 22 statements and action points based on a number of earlier relevant publications, including the Draghi report.
The committee expresses support for “the integration of institutional frameworks and market structures”. It “reiterates its demand” that the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) gets granted supervisory powers over pan-European market infrastructures. This, it believes, will achieve “greater harmonisation of regulatory frameworks across member states to facilitate cross-border investment and reduce fragmentation”. Additionally, the committee urges the European Commission to “develop proposals to properly repatriate clearing activities to the EU”.
It notes that “the aligning of member states’ legislative frameworks should be part of the simplification agenda to ease cross-border activities” and calls on the commission to “rely more on regulations rather than directives” to limit the national discretion that could lead to fragmentation.
Existential threats
The report concludes that Europe is currently faced with two existential threats: “the risk of economic and industrial decline, leading to a gradual disappearance of the EU from the global economic and geopolitical stage” and “the inability by the EU to ensure its own strategic autonomy and defence”. Describing these two crisis as “an unprecedented test of member states’ ability to collectively invest in the EU future and its survival”, it emphasises that the EU must now “explore ways to regain budgetary room for manoeuvre and mobilise private capital to invest not only at national level but also, and perhaps most importantly, at the European level”.
