Capital markets union

The European Commission launched the capital markets union in 2015 and followed with a second action plan in 2020. The goals of the capital markets union were easier access to capital for start-ups and non-listed companies, simpler listing on public markets and the removal of barriers between national markets.

On 19 March 2025 the Commission widened the project into the savings and investments union (SIU). The strategy has four parts: citizens and savings, investment and financing, integration and scale, and supervision. The SIU strategy links the plan to the investment need named in the Draghi report, 750 to 800 billion euros a year until 2030. The announcement from the Commission gives the starting point: around 70 percent of household savings, worth 10 trillion euros, held as bank deposits.

Two projects from the action plans change the daily work of banks and brokers. A consolidated tape will publish prices and volumes of securities traded across all EU venues in one data stream. And the EU moves to a shorter settlement cycle: from 11 October 2027, a share or bond bought on an EU venue on a Tuesday settles by Wednesday at the latest (T+1), after Parliament and Council agreed the change on 18 June 2025.

The market integration and supervision package from the Commission, dated 4 December 2025, covers trading, post-trading, asset management, innovation and supervision. The market integration and supervision package starts from a gap: the market capitalization of EU stock exchanges was 73 percent of GDP in 2024, against 270 percent in the US.

The package proposes direct supervision by ESMA, the EU securities authority in Paris, for significant trading venues, central securities depositories and central counterparties, and for crypto-asset service providers. A Deloitte summary puts the start-up phase from mid-2027 to mid-2029. Today BaFin licenses crypto firms in Germany under MiCA; the MiCA in Germany page describes that process.

For tokenization the package amends the DLT Pilot Regime, the EU license for trading and settling tokenized securities that 21X and 360X in Frankfurt use. Boerse Stuttgart Group ties its settlement platform Seturion to the same goal of a unified European capital market.

Much of the infrastructure the union would connect sits in and around Frankfurt: Deutsche Börse with Xetra and Eurex, Clearstream as Germany's central securities depository, and the European Central Bank, whose Eurosystem runs T2S, the securities settlement platform in central bank money. The capital markets in Frankfurt page describes these players. For asset managers, the questions are cross-border fund distribution and simpler retail products; the asset management in Germany page covers the German side.

Finance Loop follows the capital markets union where it meets new technology: tokenized securities, DLT market infrastructure and digital settlement money. Finance Loop has a cooperation with 21X, and the Frankfurt Forum on Digital Assets & Applications, which Finance Loop covers, named the market integration package among the rules that move DLT into capital markets.

The capital markets union is the EU project, started in 2015, to join the national capital markets of the member states into one market, so savers can invest across borders and companies can raise money beyond their home market. Since March 2025 it is part of the savings and investments union.

The savings and investments union is the wider strategy: it keeps the capital markets goals and adds the savings side, such as retail investment and pensions, and the integration of the banking sector.

From 11 October 2027, trades in shares and bonds on EU venues settle one business day after the trade, with securities financing transactions exempt.