Capital Markets Union

Capital Markets Union (CMU)

On 24 September 2020, the European Commission adopted a new Capital Markets Union (CMU) action plan. Increasing long-term investments in the real European economy is the core policy of the CMU, and this means it is vital that the CMU works for pension funds.

Many pension funds currently encounter barriers in the form of a mismatch between their own long-term investment horizons and the short-term focus of much of the regulatory framework.

Furthermore, political and regulatory risks are a key source of uncertainty for investors and can undermine pension funds’ willingness to invest.

The EC is now reflecting on the CMU’s progress and remaining obstacles while assessing the different workstreams working on the priorities of the next mandate.

Against that background, PensionsEurope sent a contribution to Enrico Letta, former prime minister of Italy and current president of the Jacques Delors Institute as he drafted a report “Much more than a Market”  which was delivered for the 17-18 April 2024 European Council summit. His report calls for creating an auto-enrolment EU Long-Term Savings Product by 2025 within a Savings and Investments Union.  

Our input addresses the role of our sector in the CMU agenda, our specificities and outlines different possibilities to deepen the single market.

Securitisation

PensionsEurope supports the Commission’s initiative to develop an EU framework for simple, transparent and standardised securitisation.

First and foremost, we believe that a new EU securitisation framework should be internationally consistent. Hence, we suggest aligning any future EU legislative measure with the Basel Committee/IOSCO recommendations and harmonising the regulatory definitions of securitisations typologies existing across the EU.

The standardization of definitions, information disclosure, and of performance metrics across the EU could have a positive impact on the development of EU securitisation markets, help ease investors’ analysis and increase the comparability of securitisation instruments across the EU. The development of high quality securitisation should not prevent, however, the development of other, non-standardised, securitised products.