The Savings and Investment Union (SIU) is a broad set of EU initiatives, launched in March 2025, designed to foster the development of capital and banking markets and improve links between savings and investments to enable EU companies to meet their capital needs and to increase returns for EU citizens on their long-term savings.
In April 2025, the European Commission launched a targeted consultation to gather feedback on obstacles to capital markets integration across the EU.
In AFME’s response to the consultation, we highlight our shared ambition of building deeper and more liquid markets that are competitive on a global level. The EU has a moment of opportunity to attract global capital and must focus efforts on targeted, evidence-based policy proposals, that focus on growing demand from all investor types and upholding the principles of competition and user choice.
However, we are deeply concerned that some of the proposals related to equity market structure contained in the consultation are not conducive to this end. On the contrary, we believe that measures which would reduce the complexity and high frictional costs of the current post trade ecosystem should be prioritised, and call for ambitious and innovative thinking to unlock competition in this space. We look forward to exchanging views with the Commission on this further ahead of the expected legislative proposal later this year.
