On November 28, the European Commission published a communication (COM(2018) 767 final) on the capital markets union (“CMU“). The Commission outlined that the CMU is a key priority for a number of reasons:

• completing the CMU is essential to make member state economies more resilient and to safeguard financial stability;
• the CMU will offer more choice to consumers allowing them to buy cheaper and better investment products;
• the CMU will enable financial service providers to scale-up by offering their services in other member states.

Since 2015, only three of the Commission’s original proposals contributing to the CMU have been adopted and 10 of 13 proposals are under discussion by EU legislators, including proposals on the pan-EU personal pension product and an EU covered bonds framework. The Commission calls on the European Parliament and Council of the EU to accelerate the remaining proposals before the May 2019 Parliament elections.

The full communication can be found here. The annex was published separately alongside an FAQs document.