25 September 2020

EuropeanIssuers Welcomes the “Capital Markets Union for people and businesses-new action plan”

EuropeanIssuers welcomes the general approach and focus of the Action Plan, acknowledging the existing difficulties and burdens that companies face in the current framework, and assessing the existing measures against the background of the evolving needs and developments that our economy requires, particularly in light of the COVID-19 crisis.

EuropeanIssuers, representing the interests of publicly quoted companies across Europe, welcomes the “Capital Markets Union for people and businesses-new action plan” published by the European Commission on 24 September 2020.

With its contribution to the Capital Markets Union (CMU) High-Level Forum and constant work in the field of capital markets, EuropeanIssuers has been long advocating for the development of an efficient and solid CMU as an essential step for improving financial stability and maintaining essential investment flows throughout the European Union economy, benefitting citizens and investments and the EU’s global competitiveness. Now more than ever, a renewed strategy for the CMU appears to be fundamental in order to help the EU recover from the unprecedented economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, and to build resilience against future asymmetric shocks

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EuropeanIssuers Secretary General Ms Florence Bindelle emphasised: “The ‘Capital Markets Union for people and businesses-new action plan’ acknowledges the existing challenges that companies face in the current framework. It also assesses the existing measures against the background of the evolving needs and developments that our economy requires. Supporting EU’s economy and our companies gain even greater significance in the COVID-19 crisis context. Therefore, we overall welcome the Action Plan and offer to contribute to the European Commission’s efforts in boosting EU’s capital markets ecosystem.”

The granular approach of the Action Plan, with a solid focus on 16 actions and deliverables with exact timing, constitutes a good starting point for the further elaboration of a coherent, efficient and solid CMU. In particular, EuropeanIssuers welcomes the proposal to simplify the listing rules for public markets for SMEs and to promote the creation of an SME IPO fund, with more increased capacity. EuropeanIssuers believes these measures will help reducing significant obstacles that holds SMEs back from tapping public markets, and will allow the development of long-term sustainable business strategies. Furthermore, EuropeanIssuers welcomes the proposal of developing a European financial competence framework and further actions aiming at fostering financial literacy, as it believes this will help restoring trust in financial markets and revamp investments and capital flows.

EuropeanIssuers also supports the proposal to clarify and harmonise the rules governing the interaction between investors, intermediaries and issuers, with particular regards to the introduction of an EU-wide definition of ‘shareholder’, which in most Member States is already based on the common concept of end-investor.

Nevertheless, EuropeanIssuers also observes that other measures need to be carefully studied before implementation as they could not be beneficial to the current and future environment of our industry, potentially hindering further progress. Among these, while EuropeanIssuers generally welcomes the proposal, it invites to have a careful and critic view with regards to the creation of the European Single Access Point. EuropeanIssuers is keen to stress that such a platform should be conceived and used to collect harmonised data, therefore allowing companies to save time and money, and it should be designed to be flexible in its governance and overall structure, thus allowing adaptations to the evolving ESG data. Finally, it should be made clear that it should not serve as a gateway to digitalisation of ESG data, as we believe that non-financial information is not mature enough to be processed in an automated way.

Overall, EuropeanIssuers welcomes most of the actions proposed in the Action Plan and offers to contribute to the development of initiatives that work for companies, investors and the overall EU ecosystem.

EuropeanIssuers

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