• Nicolas Véron

Stock Market Consolidation: A New Game, But Who Sets the Rules?

Financial markets have a bad habit of moving too fast. Many on the marketplace had become used to think that the European monetary union (EMU) meant the creation of an integrated European capital market alongside the progressive disappearance of fragmented, national markets. This left plenty of room for difficult policy questions: should securities regulation be kept separated from prudential supervision, as in the US or France, or brought under the same roof, as in the UK or Germany? Should the system be based on the coordination of national authorities, as now in the so-called Lamfalussy process and its intricate architecture of Europe-wide committees, or should a new European agency be created? Should the approach cover the whole EU and its 25 (soon 27) member states, or be limited to the Eurozone or the continent to bypass a possible British veto? But one thing seemed sure: the relevant scope of the next steps would be of pan-European scale. read more