Feedback on that strategy so far is mixed. Carmine Di Noia, director for financial and enterprise affairs at the OECD, told POLITICO the developments were “a step in the right direction” for obtaining a reliable funding source for the EU's needs, including on defense. He added that the plan represents a “recognition that the needed funding can't come from the public sector alone.”
In the U.S. almost 60 percent of households own stocks, either directly or indirectly through their pensions. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Others, such as Rebecca Christie, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank, worried that the strategy “still feels like they're testing the waters” and lacks concrete initiatives.
However, Christie added, the Commission needs to be flexible as long as governments continue to support its initiatives. “There's no point in spending a huge amount of time making a very detailed tactical proposal if it's dead in the water,” she said.
Separately, smaller groups of countries are working on their own projects to move the discussion forward.
Spain has rallied a “coalition of the willing” around a pilot project to test capital markets ideas like simple investment products that could be rolled out to citizens EU-wide. Finance ministers from six other countries — Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland — are backing the project, while the Nordic countries are said to be working on a similar effort.
The thinking is that if 27 countries can’t agree on a way forward, progress can still be made by the countries that will. But the project already has its critics. Paschal Donohoe, the Irish finance minister who chairs the Eurogroup format of eurozone finance ministers, told POLITICO he has “always recognized the right of countries to cooperate in smaller groups but as president of the Eurogroup, I prefer if we act together.”
Christie warned that other countries may not warm to the Spanish proposal either, fearing it's a move to ensure market dominance for capital markets players in those countries backing the projects, rather than an attempt to boost EU-wide investment in earnest.