Long-term financing - follow-up

Key points:

The EESC

• supports this Communication from the Commission
• calls on the Commission to encourage appropriate institutional and policy changes at global and Member State levels in the context of regulatory regimes which influence the longer term time horizons of investment decisions
• calls on the Commission to press for changing the bias in fiscal systems in favour of debt financing of business. Member States need to be encouraged to promote greater use of equity investment
• urges the Commission to move rapidly to implementation in terms of introducing new instruments for long term investment (such as EU 2020 Project Bonds)
• finds that the completion of a banking union is essential
• Feels that monetary policy should be accommodating to long term investment in terms of appropriate interest rates both for investors and savers
• asks to assess the feasibility of developing an EU-wide savings product
• demands that obstacles to sustainable long term finance need to be overcome and urges the Commission to take this up in its upcoming proposals on long term finance. This concerns in particular
  • incentivising investors to take a longer term perspective in their investment decisions;
  • creating new intermediaries and new instruments geared towards long term investment;
  • developing debt and equity capital markets to broaden the range of financing instruments;
  • ensuring that the flow of capital across borders is orderly and supportive of longer term investments; and
  • developing better systemic analysis when framing future regulatory policy.