|
|
The High Level Forum has brought together 28 experts from a wide spectrum of professional and national backgrounds to recommend an array of measures that should get us closer to one single market for savings, investments and raising capital for our dynamic firms so that they can grow in Europe.
The report contains not abstract ideas or high level principles that should be achieved, but very precise and clear recommendations on what should be done in order to move Europe forward. We emphasise that this is not a menu from which one can order two or three courses, and go home satisfied.
The 17 clusters of measures are mutually reinforcing, and dependent on each other. Why, one may ask, is a functioning capital market even more important now as the EU economy is trying to recover from a global health crisis.
Why was it important before COVID 19, and what has changed? Europe has for decades struggled to make its capital markets work as one, and to a large degree still has 27 capital markets, some fairly large, and quite a number rather small. The largest market, the UK, has left the EU, making the financing of the EU economy dependent on a jurisdiction where rules may well start diverging in
the medium term. With the UK having left a question for politicians is how much of this market one wants onshore, and how much offshore.
The European banking system, although better capitalised and more resilient, is not sufficient by itself to provide the amount of credit the EU economy will need to recover from the crisis. Without stronger market financing, economic growth will remain subdued.
Europe’s innovative firms have over decades grown from small to medium, and more often than not had to leave Europe to find the finance that could facilitate their further growth. 27 separate markets do not provide that in adequate form and depth.
European citizens as long-term savers and individual investors – who are one of the
primary funders of the capital markets and of the economy - too often get poor net
long term real returns. Providing cross-border access to simple, comparable, costefficient
and transparent products that provide sustainable value for money is key
for savings, and key for investments.