Europe's untapped capital market : rethinking financial integration after the crisis : final report of the European Capital Markets Expert Group

The quality of financial integration is one of Europe's principal concerns in the aftermath of the great crisis. The lack of risk sharing lies at the heart of the financial instability produced by the rapid retrenchment of capital flows within national boundaries. The limited cross-border banking and capital markets activity is unable to provide investors with the necessary risk diversification to allow economies to withstand asymmetric shocks. This book builds on a year-long discussion with a group of academics, policy-makers and industry experts to provide a long-term contribution to the Capital Markets Union project, launched by the European Commission in 2015. It identifies 36 cross-border barriers to capital markets integration and provides an organic plan, consisting of 33 policy recommendations, to relaunch EU financial integration. These aim to improve the key components of cross-border capital market transactions: price discovery, execution and enforcement. It also provides a comprehensive overview of the current structure and the state of integration of Europe's capital markets. "In the aftermath of the great financial crisis, the lack of risk diversification in the European financial system, i.e. limited cross-border banking and capital markets activities, is the main cause of the fast retrenchment of capital flows within national boundaries. Europe needs private risk sharing mechanisms to withstand asymmetric shocks, such as the recent financial crisis. An EU-wide action to promote competition among national capital markets could free up to €1.8 trillion in cash and deposits to invest cross-border in more profitable and riskier projects to create growth and jobs. In December 2014, ECMI and CEPS formed the European Capital Markets Expert Group (ECMEG) with the aim of providing a long-term contribution to the debate on the Capital Markets Union (CMU) project, proposed by the European Commission. After an intensive, year-long research effort and in-depth discussions with ECMEG members, this final report aims to rethink financial integration policies in the European Union and to devise an EU-wide plan to remove the barriers to greater capital markets integration. It offers a methodology to identify and prioritise cross-border barriers to capital markets integration and provides a set of policy recommendations to improve its key components: price discovery, execution and enforcement