彼得森经济研究所-打破僵局：单一监管机构解除欧洲资本市场联盟的束缚（英）

1750 Massachusetts Avenue, NW | Washington, DC 20036-1903 USA | +1.202.328.9000 | www.piie.comWORKING PAPER25-18 Breaking the deadlockA single supervisor to unshackle Europe’s capital markets unionNicolas VéronAugust 2025ABSTRACTThe debate about a European Union single market for nonbank financial services goes back decades. In recent years, the economic and strategic case for the idea, rebranded as capital markets union in 2014 and included in a broader concept of savings and investments union in 2024, has strengthened. But progress towards that goal has been embarrassingly modest. This working paper argues that supervisory integration—the pooling of capital market supervision at the EU level—is the only realistic option to create a foundation for the successful development of competitive capital markets on a European scale. This could be achieved through a radical transformation of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) into a single, independent, and authoritative European supervisor. ESMA would gradually take over the jobs currently done by national capital market and audit supervisors and would replace them with its own network of national offices in EU countries. This consolidation would undercut the current incentives for market fragmentation, competitive distortion, and supervisory arbitrage, while respecting the European Union’s multiplicity of financial centers, diverse market environments, and differentiated national social models. It would also represent a major simplification of the current arcane decision-making processes, allowing the European Union to move closer to the vision of a single jurisdiction for capital markets.JEL codes: G23, G24, G28 Keywords: Capital markets supervision, European Union, nonbank financial institutionsNote: An earlier version of this paper was published as Bruegel Blueprint No. 35 (June 2025). Since 2013, the author has been an independent nonexecutive director of the trade repository arm of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which includes an entity (since 2019, DTCC Derivatives Repository Ireland) that ESMA directly supervises. The author has not written his paper from this nonexecutive position.Nicolas Véron is senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.1 1 Introduction 1.1 The longstanding goal of integrating capital markets The integration of Europe’s capital markets has been on the institutional agenda since at least 1966, when the Segré Report on “The Development of a European Capital Market” was published by what was then the European Economic Community Commission. A year later, eminent financial historian Charles Kindleberger (1967, 657-658) summarized the report’s diagnosis as follows: “Many of the faults in the functioning of domestic capital markets, and institutional weaknesses, can be overcome by their progressive integration, since the faults of functioning of national security market