Capital Markets Union: Commission launches call for members to join High Level Forum

Today, the European Commission has launched a call for expression of interest for stakeholders to join a High Level Forum (HLF) on the Capital Markets Union (CMU). This Forum will support the Commission in speeding up the work towards a Capital Markets Union in Europe. The Commission is inviting applications from high-calibre professionals with an international reputation and long-standing experience in European capital markets and financial integration. Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, responsible for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, said: “We’ve made significant progress in the past five years, but more needs to be done to achieve the CMU project’s core objective: to give access to investors and businesses to more integrated European capital markets – markets that are able to fund innovation and more sustainable economic development. This access cannot depend on geographical location. We need to drive this ambition forward. This is why we’re setting up the High Level Forum: to gather policymakers, industry and consumers to collect new ideas to develop our capital markets.” The CMU is a flagship project launched by the Juncker Commission to develop and integrate EU capital markets so that they help support stable, innovation-based and sustainable economic growth. The mandate of the HLF will be to prepare targeted recommendations for policies to strengthen and to speed up the works towards the CMU. The Forum will be composed of experts coming from different sectors, including civil society, academia and the business community. Work will focus on three areas: building a pan-European ecosystem for raising capital for companies, including SMEs; fostering retail investor participation and diversification of the investor base; and strengthening a pan-European financial market architecture. Interested individuals are invited to submit their application by 7 November 2019. The selection of the group’s members will be carried out in subsequent weeks and the HLF will start its work on 26 November 2019