Among the most contentious initiatives is introducing EU supervision of “the most systemic, relevant, cross-border financial market infrastructures” amid firm resistance from a group of small countries, led by Ireland and Luxembourg, which rely on their outsized finance sectors and are reluctant to cede control to the EU level.
EU leaders are set to discuss how best to speed up Brussels’ decade-long plans to create a U.S-style financial market next week after years of lackluster results amid vying national interests. Ireland has already sounded the alarm of the E6 group, as smaller countries fret that their views will be sidelined if countries club together to integrate their financial markets.
In the letter, the E6 ministers said creating a “savings and investments union … has become an urgent strategic necessity” and that they commit to “taking action at European as well as at national level.”
Other targets in the letter include reviving the bloc’s market for resold debt, or securitization, minting virtual euro banknotes, and introducing an EU-wide one-stop shop for founding companies, dubbed the 28th regime. There are also calls for greater transparency in stock markets and a push for a legislative package this year to streamline the EU’s financial rules.
Seeking a majority
The idea of a single market watchdog, which would play a role similar to the European Central Bank’s supervisory arm for banking, has long been blocked at EU level due to the opposition of small countries and the lack of Germany’s backing.
The support of the major economies is a breakthrough in the likelihood of agreeing to the plan, which the European Commission officially proposed in December but has been informally discussed since the financial crisis.