The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) welcomes the recent adoption of the European Council’s Strategic Agenda for the next institutional cycle (2024-2029) as part of its conclusions.

Commenting on the conclusions reached, AFME’s CEO, Adam Farkas, said, ‘the adoption of the Strategic Agenda by EU leaders stresses the vital role of capital markets and banking union to unlock the necessary investment to ensure a more dynamic and competitive European economy. Strong and integrated capital and banking markets have an essential contribution to make in financing innovation, providing the investments needed for the green and digital transitions, and supporting the competitiveness of European companies. We look forward to seeing how the new European Commission will action this agenda in practice and recommend it focuses on a few bold initiatives which can have a transformative impact, such as streamlining the EU trading and post-trading landscapes, as well as ensuring securitisation can play a more effective role in bridging bank and market-based finance.

In this context, AFME also welcomes the ongoing discussions in the Council to follow up on the Eurogroup’s CMU recommendations of earlier this year. It is encouraging to see that Member States continue to actively and regularly engage on critical issues for the CMU such as unlocking retail savings. While the exchange of best practices among Member States to grow and deepen national capital markets should be pursued, the EU dimension should continue being an important part of the different Council’s workstreams as the efficiency of capital markets in a global context requires the scale that only an integrated EU market can deliver.’

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