New Ideas, Real Insights, Bold Perspectives

Dirk Loscher, Head of Custody & Investor Solutions, CEO Clearstream Europe AG

This paper examines the evolution of the European Union’s Capital Markets Union (CMU), recently reframed as the Savings and Investments Union (SIU), and evaluates the extent to which a decade of regulatory harmonization has advanced the integration of European capital markets. Despite substantial progress since 2015, Europe continues to face structural fragmentation across legal, tax, supervisory, and post-trade infrastructures, limiting cross-border capital flows and constraining its ability to mobilize the investment required to support competitiveness, digital transformation, sustainability, and defense objectives. Drawing on eight major harmonization initiatives implemented between 2015 and 2025, including TARGET2-Securities (T2S), the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR), the Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS), T+1 settlement, the FASTER Directive, MiCAR, the proposed 28th Regime, and the Market Integration and Supervision Package (MISP), the paper analyzes both the achievements and persistent challenges of the integration agenda. By synthesizing lessons from a decade of reform, the paper concludes that between regulation, operational standards, and new technology, there is no singular answer to the realization of SIU goals.

Ignazio Angeloni, Senior Policy Fellow, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, and Non-Resident Fellow, Institute for European Policymaking (IEP), Bocconi University
Marco Pagano, Professor of Finance, University of Naples Federico II, Director, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), and Research Fellow, Einaudi Institute of Economics and Finance (EIEF), Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

The European Union’s proposed Savings and Investments Union (SIU) seeks to address a longstanding paradox: Europe has abundant private savings but struggles to channel them into productive, long-term, and risk-bearing investment. This article argues that the SIU will succeed only if it avoids treating capital-market development as an alternative to banking integration. Europe remains a bank-centered financial system, especially in financing small and medium-sized enterprises, and its capital markets can realistically develop only through the active participation of stronger, larger, and more cross-border banks. The article proposes four mutually reinforcing lines of action: creating a country-blind regulatory framework for cross-border banking groups; resisting national political interference in banking consolidation; developing simple and portable savings and pension instruments that mobilize household wealth for risk capital; and reviving securitization through standardization, sound regulation, and market-making support. The central message is that the SIU can become more than just another European policy catchphrase only if it connects the Banking Union and the Capital Markets Union through a practical institutional strategy: using banks as the bridge between European savings and European investment needs.

Pablo Portugal, Senior Public Affairs Director, Euroclear
Nicolas Micheli, UK Managing Partner and Group FMI Lead, Projective Group

Calls for deeper integration of Europe’s capital markets are often influenced by comparisons with jurisdictions where a single post trade infrastructure supports a large and highly liquid market. In Europe, however, the question is not whether markets should be unified, but how unity can be achieved in a structurally diverse environment. This article argues that interoperability, rather than institutional uniformity, is the mechanism through which Europe can achieve scale, liquidity, and operational coherence. Drawing on established European market models in fixed income, exchange traded products, and cross border settlement, it shows how hub based and interoperable architectures have already delivered efficiencies and network effects that rival, and in key respects outperform, those of infrastructures in other leading jurisdictions. In a period of technological transformation and increasing adoption of distributed ledger technologies, such models offer superior resilience, stronger incentives for innovation, and greater strategic autonomy. The article concludes by identifying the remaining legal, supervisory, and market practice barriers to broader adoption, and sets out principles for deepening European market integration while preserving competition and diversity.

Ben Pott, International Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs, BNY

Europe has no shortage of savings – it has a shortage of mechanisms to turn those savings into productive investment. In this article, I argue that the success of the EU’s Savings and Investments Union will depend not on further regulatory reform alone, but on removing the structural barriers that continue to fragment capital markets. From tax, insolvency, and market infrastructure reform to securitization, pensions, retail investing, and digital assets, this article outlines a practical roadmap for mobilizing capital at scale, strengthening competitiveness, and unlocking long-term economic growth. At a moment when Europe faces significant investment needs and growing global competition, this article will set out what is required to transform policy ambition into tangible market outcomes.

Robert Hooper, Chief Information Officer (CIO) – EMEA, SMBC Group
John Parker, Partner, Transformation Practice Leader, Projective Group

This article explores whether standardized operating models are becoming a strategic necessity for European banks. Against a backdrop of regulatory complexity, technological transformation, and growing resilience requirements, it examines how banks can balance local regulatory demands with enterprise-wide consistency. It also highlights the growing role of cloud platforms, data governance, and precision-based AI in improving efficiency, reducing risk, and delivering better customer outcomes. Offering a Chief Information Officer’s perspective on one of banking’s most pressing challenges, the article provides insights into building financial institutions that are more resilient, scalable, and competitive.

Eelco Dubbeling, General Manager, Nederlandse Vereniging van Banken (Dutch Banking Association)
Tom Rood, Senior Policy Advisor for Financial Markets, Nederlandse Vereniging van Banken (Dutch Banking Association)
Simon Rooze, Senior Advisor for Public Affairs, Nederlandse Vereniging van Banken (Dutch Banking Association)

This retrospective from 2050 examines how the European Union (EU) can succeed in creating a genuine Savings and Investment Union (SIU). Using a potential future scenario as an analytical framework, the article explores the economic, regulatory, and political developments that can transform Europe’s fragmented financial landscape into a more competitive, and resilient financial ecosystem. The article reflects on the challenges that confront policymakers in the mid-2020s and assesses the role of key initiatives such as the Market Integration and Supervision Package (MISP), enhanced European supervision, and the necessary political leadership required in overcoming these obstacles. Ultimately, it argues that the success of the SIU depends not only on technical reforms, but on a fundamental political choice to treat capital market integration as a strategic European project essential to long-term prosperity, innovation, and economic sovereignty.

Andrea Beltramello, Head of the Savings and Investments Union Coordination unit, Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, European Commission
John Maguire, Policy Officer - Savings and Investments Union Coordination unit, Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, European Commission

Europe faces an economic paradox: despite holding one of the largest pools of private wealth globally, household savings remain heavily concentrated in low-yield bank deposits while businesses struggle to secure the long-term financing required for innovation and global competitiveness. To address this challenge and finance the EU’s strategic priorities, the European Commission launched the Savings and Investments Union (SIU) Strategy. Serving as the citizen-focused evolution of the Capital Markets Union, the SIU bridges European savings and productive investment through four mutually reinforcing pillars: empowering citizens to invest and get a better return from their savings, building a robust growth-finance ecosystem for businesses, enhancing market integration, and advancing a more integrated supervisory framework in the EU. Supported by strong political momentum and national-level reforms, the SIU aims to transform Europe’s financial system into an integrated, high-scale market that supports sustainable growth, household prosperity, and long-term economic resilience.

Miye Kohlhase, Member of the Executive Board, Clients and Markets, Association of German Banks (Bankenverband, BdB)

Europe is under immense economic, demographic, and geopolitical pressure: above all, Europe must strengthen its resilience and overcome its persistently weak growth. The coming months will be critical in determining whether Europe can safeguard its long-term economic and political capacity to act. In this context competitiveness, capital market integration, and strong banks are a strategic issue.

Competitiveness is a core pillar of European sovereignty. It is a prerequisite for expanding modern infrastructure, for the digital transformation, for defense capability, and for the transition to a sustainable economy. The investment required for this is enormous and calls for an efficient system to finance it. Strong banks and a high-performing capital market are, therefore, indispensable. They finance investment, innovation, and growth and ensure the efficient allocation of capital. At the same time, the European capital market is still not making sufficient use of its potential and capabilities. Europe needs a capital market that mobilizes private capital on a large scale, reliably finances companies and businesses and offers retail and institutional investors attractive, non-complex, and competitive financial products. The European Commission’s project, the Savings and Investments Union, can provide the right framework for this, provided it does not become mired in additional regulation but removes concrete market barriers and bureaucracy, thereby facilitating cross-border investment. Creating deep and liquid capital markets in the EU is more than a financial-market initiative. It is the strategic foundation for Europe’s economic capacity to act and for Europe’s independence in geopolitically uncertain times, because public finances alone will not be sufficient to address the challenges. The course must now be set correctly. From the perspective of the private banks in Germany, this concerns five fields of action: 1. Streamlining regulation; 2. modernizing market processes; 3. advancing market integration; 4. increasing financing capacity; and 5. support from the Member States at national level.

Ralf Temporale, Managing Director - Country Lead Germany, Projective Group

Europe can produce world-class technology but cannot retain the companies that scale it, and this failure has become one of the defining sovereignty challenges of our time: the continent’s digital, financial, and defense infrastructure now depends on compute, cloud, and capital it does not control. The scale of the problem is captured in a single figure. Europe’s growth-stage funding gap is estimated to be U.S.$375 bln, against which the flagship public instrument, the Scaleup Europe Fund, commits roughly €5 bln. Public money was never meant to fill that gap; it was meant to catalyze the institutional capital held by European insurers, pension funds, banks, and asset managers. The decisive shift is this: after two years of unprecedented policy activity—from the Draghi and Letta Reports to the Competitiveness Compass, the Scaleup Europe Fund, EU Inc., and the Solvency II reforms—the binding constraint is no longer the regulatory framework, which has largely been put in place. The remaining constraint lies in the internal investment governance of European financial institutions: the investment committees, benchmarks, fiduciary practices, and risk frameworks that remain calibrated to a different portfolio allocation and a different economic era. The implication is clear. This is no longer primarily a policy challenge to be addressed in Brussels, but a capital allocation decision to be made by Europe’s financial institutions themselves. If the investment case is competitive on a risk-adjusted basis, and current valuations provide an attractive entry point, the responsibility shifts from policymakers to institutional investors. The decision is ultimately an institutional one, but its consequences extend to Europe’s economic sovereignty.

Urs Reich, Head Public Affairs & Market Structure, SIX Group

Europe does not suffer from a shortage of private savings, but from a persistent inability to channel private wealth into productive investments. Despite successive efforts to deepen European capital markets, retail participation remains limited, with households continuing to hold a significant share of their financial assets in low-yield deposits. This article examines the structural, behavioral, and regulatory barriers behind this underutilization. These include low financial literacy, limited investor confidence, fragmented market structures, and the complexity of investor-protection rules. The article reviews recent EU policy initiatives, including the transition from the Capital Markets Union to the Savings and Investments Union, the Retail Investment Strategy, and the proposed development of national Savings and Investment Accounts. It argues that these reforms are necessary but insufficient on their own. Without a sustained effort to improve financial literacy and build a broader investment culture, retail investors are unlikely to become meaningful participants in European capital markets. Financial education should, therefore, be treated as a core pillar of Europe’s capital markets agenda, not as a complementary policy objective.

Julia Kolbe, Head of Capital Markets & UK Policy at Deutsche Bank AG, London

Ten years after the launch of the Capital Markets Union, Europe continues to face structural fragmentation across legal systems, market infrastructures, and supervisory frameworks that limit the scale and efficiency of its capital markets. This article argues that further regulatory harmonization alone is unlikely to overcome these challenges. Instead, it explores the potential of a modular “28th regime” that would provide an optional European framework for inherently cross-border activities while preserving national diversity. Focusing on securities issuance, post-trade services, and supervision, the article proposes a pragmatic roadmap for deeper market integration. It further argues that digitalization should be embedded throughout the framework to reduce friction, enhance interoperability, and support European scale.

Issam Hallak, Faculty of Business and Economics (FEB), K.U. Leuven, and Policy Analyst, European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), European Parliament

This article examines the EU’s strategy for establishing a Savings and Investments Union (SIU) to advance financial system integration (FSI). It argues that growing concerns over European competitiveness and innovation have reshaped the rationale for FSI and, in turn, influenced the design of the SIU. However, given the EU’s limited competences in this area, the European Commission has also had to rely on the actions, and support of Member States to achieve its competitiveness objectives.

Rebecca Christie, Senior Fellow, Bruegel

The European Union (EU) has not well integrated its green goals with its overall approach to finance. This article proposes a more market-oriented approach to sustainable finance that links EU’s disclosure policy with its capital markets union initiatives. Projects that help the climate transition need money; hence they need optimal market conditions as well as environmental credentials. To make its sustainable finance policy more fit for purpose, the EU should prioritize the solving of technical challenges; look beyond green bonds to equities, venture capital, and other asset classes; use guarantees and subsidies sparingly to incentivize investment and market tools such as securitization; reduce the role of the EU taxonomy and simplify data collection; and pare back the role of so-called double materiality so that EU rules can be more compatible with global standards, such as those developed by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).

Apostolos Thomadakis, Head of Research, European Capital Markets Institute (ECMI); Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Financial Markets and Institutions Unit, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS); Associate Senior Fellow, International Economics and Development Laboratory; National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

After more than a decade of Capital Markets Union initiatives, the EU has established stronger foundations for financial integration, yet persistent structural barriers continue to constrain market development. This paper argues that the principal challenge is no longer simply identifying further reforms, but ensuring that legislation, institutions, and market initiatives function as a coherent system. It proposes treating the Savings and Investments Union as a permanent policy function supported by an operating model linking strategic coordination, rulemaking, implementation, performance monitoring, and accountability. The objective is to improve system-wide delivery and mobilize European savings for productive investment without creating another institutional layer.

Michael Huertas, Partner and Global Financial Services Legal Leader, PwC Legal

This article examines the EU’s evolving approach to capital markets supervision in the context of the Savings and Investments Union (SIU) Strategy and the Market Integration and Supervision Package (MISP) of December 2025, as updated in June 2026. It analyzes the tension between national supervisory autonomy and centralized European oversight, assessing arguments on both sides. The article situates these proposals within the competitive and geopolitical pressures facing European capital markets, including Capital Market Union (CMU) fragmentation, the Draghi and Letta reports, and post-Brexit reconfiguration. Particular attention is given to the Irish Council Presidency, which commenced 1 July 2026 and its potential to broker compromise. The article concludes with strategic considerations for market participants navigating an increasingly integrated - yet politically contested - supervisory landscape.

Filippo Bagni, Research fellow, CybeRights Interuniversity Research Centre, and Legal Officer, European Commission
Ludovica Ciarravano, Ph.D. Candidate in Cybersecurity, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca and University of Florence
Devit Keqi, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Florence, and Public servant, Tuscany Region
Fabio Seferi, Ph.D. Candidate in Cybersecurity, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca and University of Florence
Daria Vernon De Mars, Ph.D. Candidate in Legal Science, University of Florence, and Research Associate, European University Institute

Regulatory sandboxes have become a key instrument in EU digital governance, and substantial academic research has mapped their legal framework and assessed their operational effectiveness. This paper does not revisit that ground. Instead, it identifies a set of structurally important questions that have been inadequately investigated in the existing literature. These questions address the fundamental issue of whether sandboxes can function as legitimate, effective, and democratically accountable instruments of public law. The analysis is structured around five dimensions. The first concerns the co-regulatory shift that sandboxes represent, as well as the associated legitimacy issues and risks of regulatory capture. The second dimension examines the conditions under which sandboxes can facilitate genuine regulatory learning rather than merely bilateral information exchange. The third dimension addresses communication as a critical yet systematically underspecified governance function throughout the sandbox lifecycle. The fourth dimension examines the territorial aspect of sandbox governance, where a significant gap remains between legal possibility and operational readiness. The fifth dimension explores the relationship between sandbox design and the operational protection of fundamental rights. Together, these five dimensions reveal that sandboxes are not merely governance instruments; they also mirror the structural tensions running through EU digital governance. Improving them requires addressing issues that extend well beyond the instrument itself at a time when the current governance choices will indelibly shape how the digital domain is governed and organized.

Tom Hofland, Senior Associate M&A and Capital Markets, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek

More than a decade after the EU set out to build a single capital market, the same issuer, the same underlying business, and the same advisory team can still face fundamentally different outcomes depending on which national regulator happens to review the transaction. This article examines why that gap between a harmonized rulebook and divergent supervisory practice persists, and whether current reform proposals are likely to close it. It sets out the architecture of European financial supervision, contrasting the European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) carefully limited mandate under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union with the differing institutional choices Member States have made, illustrated by the Dutch twin-peaks model and the Central Bank of Ireland’s single-regulator model. It then turns to prospectus supervision, where a fully harmonized regulation still produces materially different approval timelines, transfer practices, and information-sharing outcomes across national competent authorities (NCAs). Taking stock of the Capital Markets Union’s limited progress against its own targets, the article assesses the 2025 Savings and Investment Union and the December 2025 Market Integration and Supervision Package, which extends direct ESMA supervision only to defined categories of systemically significant infrastructure and crypto-asset service providers while leaving the general prospectus-approval model untouched. Drawing on the Dutch experience of a well-specified, cooperative division of labor between its two supervisors, the article concludes that the more fixable problem is not insufficient centralization but the EU’s failure to fully use convergence tools it already has, above all ESMA’s long-dormant power to standardize how NCAs exchange prospectus information, and proposes four concrete changes to close that gap.