Commission consults on Savings and Investment Union

On 8 May 2025, the European Commission published a Call for Evidence (CfE) in relation to its Savings and Investment Union (SIU) strategy.

The CfE seeks stakeholders' views on:

• identifying barriers that prevent the EU's trading and post-trading infrastructures from achieving a truly frictionless single market

• examining whether the current regulatory and supervisory setting is fit for the capital markets - especially for market operators with strong cross-border activities or operating in new or emerging sectors and

• reviewing the toolbox of the European Supervisory Authorities to assess how to strengthen and improve their effectiveness and efficiency.

What happens next?

Respondents should submit their feedback by 5 June 2025.

The Commission expects to adopt a legislative proposal in Q4 2025.

What's the background?

In March 2025, the Commission published a Communication on a Savings and Investments Union (SIU).

This sets out a broad set of EU-wide initiatives intended to deepen European capital markets, reduce fragmentation and ensure enhanced competitiveness by removing barriers to trading and post-trading, to the distribution of investment funds in the single market and to the scalability of investment funds and by removing sources of inefficiencies.

See our summary of the Communication here.

Having fragmented capital markets in the EU (a result of, among other things, inconsistent national supervisory practices, divergent national rules and market practices that favour national markets functioning in isolation from one another) leads to higher costs, limited market efficiency, and restricted investment opportunities.

The EU has long realised that a more integrated and harmonised supervisory framework is needed to address these barriers and unlock the full potential of the EU's capital markets.

The SIU initiative, then, aims to tackle several problems:

• barriers that fragment the EU market infrastructure

• barriers to the operations of asset managers and distribution of funds and

• fragmented supervision.

In respect of asset managers, the CfE notes that when operating across multiple EU Member States, they face unnecessary barriers and costs and must navigate multiple and sometimes diverging rules. In addition, use of a marketing passport across the EU is negatively impacted by gold-plating, national barriers and divergent supervisory practices. This means that EU citizens are faced with reduced investment opportunities and increased fees.

The need for EU action

The CfE states that action at the EU-level action is needed to remove regulatory barriers, ensure a level playing field and increase market efficiency - these goals cannot be achieved by EU countries individually.

The SIU initiative aims to foster a seamless, integrated capital market across the EU by strengthening the supervisory framework, addressing regulatory fragmentation and ensuring better integration and deepening of capital markets throughout the EU.

The Commission will look not just at legal and regulatory barriers but also at market practices that lead to fragmented liquidity pools between types of markets, including poor cross-border connections between intermediaries and trading venues.

In addition, the Commission will propose legislation to remove remaining barriers to the distribution of EU-authorised funds across the EU as well as those which affect the operations of asset managers (both large asset managers and more specialised ones).