European Union leaders have given fresh urgency to a long-stalled ambition: persuading European households to move their savings out of low-yield bank deposits and into capital markets. Whether they can finally pull it off is another question.
EU leaders elevated the Savings & Investments Union (SIU) to their top economic priority at an informal summit in Alden Biesen, Belgium, earlier this month, setting a target of delivering the framework by the end of 2026. The push comes as the bloc confronts a widening investment deficit, intensifying competition from the United States and China, and mounting pressure to fund defence and green transition priorities without relying solely on public debt.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has been blunt about the stakes. At the formal launch of the SIU strategy in March 2025, she said the initiative would deliver a dual win. “Households will have more and safer opportunities to invest in capital markets and increase their wealth,” she said. “At the same time, businesses will have easier access to capital to innovate, grow and create good jobs in Europe.”
The policy’s foundation rests on a 2024 report by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, which estimated that Europe requires an additional €750 to €800 billion in investment per year by 2030 to remain competitive. Von der Leyen has said completing the SIU could unlock up to €470 billion in annual investment — but only if member states move in concert.
The SIU is largely a rebranding of the Capital Markets Union project the EU has pursued since 2015 — with little to show for it. Von der Leyen conceded as much at the Alden Biesen summit, telling leaders she was “determined to make it happen this time, after we have debated a capital markets union for at least ten years.”
Member state divisions threaten to replay that history. France wants a single EU-wide supervisory authority, which it has proposed locating in Paris. Ireland and Nordic member states have pushed back, arguing the move would undercut their domestic financial sectors. Divergent national insolvency regimes compound the problem, making cross-border contract enforcement a persistent obstacle to any genuinely integrated market.
If unanimity among all 27 member states proves out of reach, von der Leyen has signaled she is prepared to invoke “enhanced cooperation” rules, allowing a coalition of at least nine willing countries to proceed without the rest. EU diplomats have warned, however, that this path risks leaving non-participating states on the margins of rules that will ultimately shape their financial markets anyway.
Critics question whether a policy designed to steer savings toward EU-designated strategic sectors — including defence, semiconductors, and the green transition — is truly voluntary in practice, or whether it subtly reshapes the incentive structures that guide where Europeans put their money.
The Commission maintains that the initiative expands choice rather than restricts it, and does not grant authorities the power to compel or redirect private savings. They plan to release further SIU legislative proposals in March 2026, with an initial phase of measures targeted for completion by June 2026.
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