Valiante, Diego, (2015), “Light and shadows in Europe’s new Action Plan for Capital Markets Union”, ECMI Commentary, No. 4o, Ceps, 6 October
The European Commission’s new Action Plan for Capital Markets Union, unveiled on September 30th, consists in a nutshell of a short list of technical proposals and a longer one of (rather general) potential actions. Overall, the plan indeed proposes to achieve some short-term objectives, such as a reduction of listing costs for SMEs, but it lacks long-term vision. The plan bundles actions under rather generic objectives of long-term finance or cross-border investing. Improving the informational infrastructure (e.g. accounting standards, company data) and cross-border enforcement of rules is left to vaguely defined future actions, but these constitute the core of the capital markets infrastructure. Without a well-defined set of measurable objectives, the whole plan may lose political momentum and become an opportunity for interested parties to cherry pick their pet provisions.
Relevant Posts
- Véron, Nicolas, (2015), “Europe’s capital markets union and the new single market challenge”, Voxeu, 8 October
- Ruparel, Raoul, (2015), “Commission eyes pragmatic steps towards Capital Markets Union”, Open Europe, 30 September