TheCityUK welcomes today’s Communication from the European Commission on the long term financing of the European economy.
The Communication contains a number of actions that TheCityUK has called for and strongly supports. These include a review of the Private Placement Market across Europe, which we believe has the potential to provide a much needed additional source of funding for SMEs. We also welcome further action to promote the role of the European Investment Bank to support infrastructure projects through its Project Bond programme.
Infrastructure will be the foundation of Europe’s long term growth prospects and the possibility of expanding the scope of the Project Bond beyond the Connecting Europe Facility is a positive development. Establishing a single portal for infrastructure projects in the EU, if adopted, could be valuable in helping investors identify potential projects. We call on the next European Commission to ensure that these ambitions become a reality.
TheCityUK has repeatedly highlighted the importance of ensuring that the existing regulatory regime does not prevent banks and insurers from providing finance to the economy. The Commission has acknowledged that these concerns will continue to be addressed in ongoing work on the Solvency II regime and the Capital Requirements Directive. We call on the Commission to closely monitor this issue and assess the Solvency II delegated acts and the liquidity coverage ratio and net stable funding requirement once published, from the perspective of the impact on long term investment.
This Communication comes near the end of the Commission’s current mandate and is an important contribution to the debate on how to promote growth in Europe. We call on the next European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services to ensure that the actions contained in today’s Communication are adopted and that the next Commission promotes a regulatory climate supports long term growth in the EU.