From CMU to SIU: Stalled financial market integration in Europe

Financial market integration has been a major but elusive policy goal since the earliest days of the European Economic Community and capital markets have been the subject of hundreds of pieces of European Union (EU) legislation. Such integration is to be achieved by removing the remaining obstacles to cross-border finance and by harmonising the regulation and supervision of capital markets across EU member states, with some degree of centralisation of authority at the EU level. In 2015, following almost a decade of financial market disintegration triggered by the 2008 Great Financial Crisis and then the euro area sovereign debt crisis, the European Commission and supporting member states launched the ‘Capital Markets Union’ (CMU) project. Yet, the project made very little progress over the following decade, despite a relaunch by the Commission in 2020, a number of high-profile proposals in favour of progress, and more recently a relabelling exercise when CMU was renamed ‘Savings and Investments Union’ (SIU) in early 2025. The European Commission, with the endorsement of the member states, is currently working on proposals to advance market integration in Europe and make the SIU a reality.

This two day conference sets out to investigate the multifaceted nature of SIU and the challenges that it entails. It does so by addressing three interrelated questions: i) What is SIU, and, in particular, what are the key components of SIU? ii) Why has capital markets integration been so difficult to achieve in Europe, and what are the main drivers of and obstacles to it? iii) What are the (at times, unexpected) implications of financial integration in the EU — or lack thereof — and, in particular, the adoption of the SIU project? In addressing these questions, the conference presenters focus on specific elements of financial market integration while contributing to a comprehensive but nuanced view of the politics and political economy of European financial market integration.

Conference at the Luxembourg Centre for European Law, University of Luxembourg, 5-6 March 2026. Funded by the Luxembourg Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence (Robert Schuman Initiative) and the PROSPER Jean Monnet Network (run by Dublin City University).

The discussions during the two-day conference have been recorded and can be viewed below: