The European Commission has initiated a consultation on EU capital market integration as it pushes the savings and investments union (SIU) project ahead.
Officially adopted on 19 March, the SIU succeeds the capital markets union (CMU) as the Commission’s EU-wide market integration initiative. Aiming to encourage greater institutional and retail investors participation across the union, the project seeks to reduce cross-border investment barriers and subsequently improve the region’s economic competitiveness.
“People are aware of the barriers to integrated European capital markets, but this paper is seeking solutions including bringing up issues that have been tabled or compromised on earlier—for example, the benefits of greater pre-trade data depth in the equities consolidated tape. The Commission are also seeking to concretely address obstacles to competitive market maker participation on single market maker venues.”, Lara Shevchenko, senior policy advisor for market structure at the FIA European Principal Traders Association, told Global Trading.
“Hopefully it’s the start of a more substantive discussion. At the moment, it’s not actually proposing any solutions—it’s basically 80 pages of questions.”
Online, the consultation questionnaire has been split into two parts due to its length.
The consultation, which opened on 15 April, will close on 10 June. “It’s an ambitious consultation, and a compressed timeline,” Shevchenko commented. “It will be interesting to see what respondents can come up with in the time that they have.”
“There’s a lot of work to be done over the next few weeks.”
