Europe’s Savings and Investments Union: Another Slogan, or a Strategy That Can Work?

The European Union’s proposed Savings and Investments Union seeks to address a longstanding paradox: Europe has abundant private savings but struggles to channel them into productive, longterm and risk-bearing investment. This article argues that the SIU will succeed only if it avoids treating capital-market development as an alternative to banking integration. Europe remains a bank-centered financial system, especially in financing small and medium-sized enterprises, and its capital markets can realistically develop only through the active participation of stronger, larger, and more cross-border banks. The article proposes four mutually reinforcing lines of action: creating a country-blind regulatory framework for cross-border banking groups; resisting national political interference in banking consolidation; developing simple and portable savings and pension instruments that mobilize household wealth for risk capital; and reviving securitization through standardization, sound regulation, and market-making support. The central message is that the SIU can become more than another European policy slogan only if it connects Banking Union and Capital Markets Union in a practical institutional strategy: using banks as the bridge between European savings and European investment needs.

Additional author: Marco Pagano