(Bloomberg) — The European Union should re-brand its effort to unite fragmented financial markets if it is to close the gap behind the US and ensure autonomy faced with geopolitical challenges, the Bank of France Governor said.
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Initiatives in the decade-long Capital Markets Union project have focused on the aims of stabilization and market financing, but too little on equity and cross border flows needed to invest in the climate and digital transitions, Francois Villeroy de Galhau said.
“We must shift from a mere stabilizing purpose to an allocation purpose, and thus ‘rebrand’ the CMU,” he said in a speech at the Eurofi conference in Ghent, Belgium. “I hereby call loudly and clearly for a ‘Financing Union for Transition.’”
Villeroy’s demand for greater ambition echoes other policy makers who have warned that Europe’s financial power is far below potential at a time when the continent faces huge investment needs and seeks to rely less on foreign capital.
Speaking earlier in Ghent, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said he was “fed up” with the inertia in CMU negotiations and a small group of countries should club together to make progress and “unchain” economic growth.
ECB President Christine Lagarde has said advancing CMU is the best way to proof Europe against the potential economic shocks of second Donald Trump presidency.
“A strong and deep Financing Union will be key to ensuring Europe’s strategic autonomy, unlocking and channeling its key domestic resource – private savings – to our priorities in a troubled and fragmented world, to which the upcoming elections add another layer of uncertainty,” Villeroy said.
According to the Bank of France governor, a first step to boost equity financing – which represents only 84% of euro area GDP compared to 173% in the US – would be to remove legal and tax obstacles cross border funds.
He also advocated creating a unified ledger in Europe for all kinds of tokenized assets, boosting securitization of green assets, and granting more power to the European Securities and Markets Authority to oversee cross border entities.
“We should go beyond the ‘CMU fatigue‘ – which is real – and scale up our ‘CMU ambition,’” Villeroy said.
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