Savings and Investment Union: No EU Commission proposal yet

From the Correspondent in Strasbourg – “We cannot maintain the status quo.” Word from Maria Luís Albuquerque, the European Commissioner for Financial Services. Speaking late this afternoon (March 31) to MEPs meeting in a plenary session in Strasbourg, she reiterated the urgency of building a Savings and Investment Union because if we do not “act immediately,” we risk “losing our place as a global player.”

For months, the idea — different from the “simple” Capital Markets Union, Albuquerque says — has been back in the spotlight, at least since former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta took out of the drawer his report on the future of the single market. “We need to make sure that there is a radical change both in the single market and national markets,” stressed the commissioner. She added that the recipe to achieve the goal is coordinating a joint effort involving “institutions, member states, businesses, and civil society.”

However, there is still not much clarity on concrete actions. The EU executive delayed presenting a legislative proposal until after the summer. For now, they repeat the same slogans: the bureaucratic barriers should be “lifted,” citizens should be incentivized to “invest in capital markets” (but not in foreign ones), and “more cross-border investment funds” should be created to finance “common strategic projects.”

“Too often European companies cannot benefit from the scale of the internal market,” Albuquerque noted because of its fragmentation. “We will present legislative proposals” for “the removal of barriers, cross-border operations, market infrastructure, asset management, and distribution of funds,” she promised. And supervision in the single market, treating all participants “equally” and ensuring “that national practices are homogeneous.”

After assuring that Brussels “will not forcibly withdraw money from citizens” and that these will be voluntary instruments, the commissioner added that the Banking Union and the Savings and Investment Union are linked and that both areas require progress. “Our savings are fleeing abroad,” she said in front of the hemicycle. “We need to ensure the same conditions” offered elsewhere to stop the bleeding. “We are not competing with each other, but with third countries,” she concluded.