The European Union needs "to make the Savings and Investments Union a reality", European Investment Bank (EIB) President Nadia Calviño said in a letter to European Council President António Costa.
In the letter, as seen by Euronews, Calviño outlines the priorities for the banking institution ahead of the informal European Council that will take place on 12 February in Belgium.
Among other priorities, the letter highlights the need to accelerate the Savings and Investment Union strategy, a package of legislative proposals that would redirect a small share of European savings toward investment in European businesses with the goal of fostering prosperity.
"The right frameworks and instruments need to be in place as soon as possible to make sure European savings are channelled to where they are most needed: innovative businesses across Europe," Calviño wrote in her letter.
Although the single files in the package are extremely technical and bureaucratic for the general public, the aim of the overall strategy have a sharp impact on the European's population.
Increasing the number of investors and businesses in European capital markets is a way Europe can become a richer continent and compete with other big blocs, such as the US.
"A key investment barrier in this context is access to finance", Calviño mentions in the letter. "Only a third of US companies (29%) perceive this as an impediment to investment whereas almost half of European companies (45%) do."
One of the goals of the Savings and Investments Union is to harmonise rules and centralise certain operations at the European level in order to better integrate markets that are currently fragmented along national lines.
Among the proposals is the idea of centralising financial market supervision. While there are European rules on how to regulate the financial markets, national regulators interpret them in different ways. Another proposal is to harmonise insolvency laws.
Although most EU countries support a more geopolitically competitive European landscape, disagreements over the details of EU legislation often slow the progress of overall reform.
