Activities Report 2017

The future of Europe's capital markets is uncertain in the face of policy, market and technological developments.

In the wake of the financial crisis, the Juncker Commission set the ambition of further aligning the different markets in Europe and allowing for better risk-sharing mechanisms.

Three years on, it is clear that it remains a useful project, but is probably also a distant objective. Asset allocation patterns in Europe continue to be very diverse. Political events in the most developed European capital markets will create additional barriers. Global technological developments raise big governance questions and market supervisory structures are evolving in a more ad hoc way, rather than being clearly structured.

For ECMI, this means that much remains to be done to monitor these developments and remind policymakers of the inefficiencies in Europe's capital markets.

Karel Lannoo, CEO of CEPS and General Manager of ECMI