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EU Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque’s keynote speech at the FESE Convention 2025 (Federation of European Securities Exchanges) focused heavily on the Savings and Investments Union (SIU), a key strategy to build a more dynamic and efficient investment ecosystem across the EU.
Here are the main themes and takeaways from her speech, drawing on available information about the event and the Commissioner’s previous statements:
* The Savings and Investments Union (SIU) as a Central Pillar: Albuquerque emphasized that the SIU is at the core of the EU’s efforts to enhance its competitiveness and ensure a robust financial future. The goal is to channel abundant European savings into productive investments within the EU.
* Addressing Fragmentation in European Capital Markets: A recurring theme is the need to overcome fragmentation in European equity markets. The Commissioner highlighted that inefficient markets are affecting the depth of liquidity pools, and stressed the importance of improving how infrastructures connect and operate to reduce fragmentation, lower costs, and boost efficiency.
* Boosting IPO Activity and Attracting Issuers: The speech likely touched upon policies to attract and retain issuers, and to boost Initial Public Offering (IPO) activity in Europe. This is crucial for enabling companies, especially innovative ones, to scale up and grow within the EU.
* Mobilizing Private Capital: Albuquerque underscored that public funds alone cannot meet the massive investment needs for innovation, growth, and resilience. Therefore, mobilizing private sector contributions through a well-integrated capital market is essential.
* Empowering Citizens and Retail Investors: A key objective of the SIU is to empower citizens to make their savings work harder by providing better and easier access to capital markets. This involves increasing financial literacy and making investing more accessible and cost-effective, ensuring that it benefits all citizens, big and small.
* Harmonized Supervisory Culture: The Commissioner likely advocated for a more harmonized supervisory culture across Europe as a step towards a simpler, more efficient investment ecosystem, ensuring predictability for all investors.
* Embracing Innovation and Modernizing Rules: The speech also touched on the need to embrace innovation, including distributed ledger technology (DLT), tokenization, and AI, and to ensure that the regulatory framework keeps pace with market evolution.
* Addressing Internalization of Trading and Settlement: Albuquerque acknowledged the significant shift towards internalizing trading and settlement by large players, who find it simpler and more cost-efficient to handle these activities in-house. This highlights the need for exchanges to demonstrate their value and efficiency.
In essence, Commissioner Albuquerque’s speech at the FESE Convention 2025 served as a call to action for deeper integration of European capital markets, emphasizing the crucial role of exchanges in achieving the ambitious goals of the Savings and Investments Union.

Video courtesy of CSOB

Video courtesy of CSOB .