26 September 2019

Markets4Europe campaign presents recommendations for building a truly integrated capital markets union in the EU

Markets4Europe, a campaign advocating more effective use of market finance in Europe, presented its main recommendations that are designed to encourage the creation of a more integrated Capital Markets Union in the EU.

The campaign, backed by chief executives /presidents from the EU’s private sector and former political and public sector leaders, seeks to fundamentally transform the EU’s financial sector through a greater availability of capital markets financing.

The key recommendations are:

• Channel long-term savings into financing entrepreneurship by enabling private pension funds, insurance companies and other long-term investors to invest in venture capital and equity markets;
• Make cross-border investment as easy and reliable as domestic investment through further harmonisation/alignment of civil law in areas such as insolvency law and securities law to overcome inefficiency and undue complexity and more efficient operational processes for corporate actions, asset segregation and registration;
• Remove tax obstacles to investors and companies, e.g. by simplifying the calculation of the tax base for companies; by preventing double taxation of investors through improved withholding tax relief and refund procedures; by promoting best practices of simplifying tax processes and encouraging special tax regimes for starts-ups and first-time issuers of equity;
• Improve the companies’ direct access to capital markets through regulatory and non-regulatory initiatives that make smaller companies more visible and remove unnecessary regulatory complexity for issuers and investors; and improve companies’ indirect access through a review of the framework for securitisation to allow it to act as a bridge between lending and capital markets;
• Embark on an EU-wide campaign of financial literacy to educate the current and future generations of investors and entrepreneurs through EU coordination of model curricula, promotion of best practice and training of teachers, in collaboration with private sector and academic experts;
• Strengthen the EU’s international role through a stronger presence in international financial dialogues, new euro-based benchmarks, more convergent supervision in the EU, and better-connected financial centres.

The recommendations are included in the ‘Markets4Europe Roadmap to a Capital Markets Union for Companies and Savers’, to be released in full at the Markets4Europe launch event 2 October, in Brussels.

Full press release on Markets4Europe

Full executive summary on Markets4Europe

© EBF